Title: Their Fractured Light
Author: Amie Kaufman & Meagan Spooner
Published: 1 Dec 2015
Series: Starbound #3
Rating: 5 stars
Synopsis:
A year ago, Flynn Cormac and Jubilee Chase made the now infamous Avon Broadcast, calling on the galaxy to witness for their planet, and protect them from destruction. Some say Flynn’s a madman, others whisper about conspiracies. Nobody knows the truth. A year before that, Tarver Merendsen and Lilac LaRoux were rescued from a terrible shipwreck—now, they live a public life in front of the cameras, and a secret life away from the world’s gaze.
Now, in the center of the universe on the planet of Corinth, all four are about to collide with two new players, who will bring the fight against LaRoux Industries to a head. Gideon Marchant is an eighteen-year-old computer hacker—a whiz kid and an urban warrior. He’ll climb, abseil and worm his way past the best security measures to pull off onsite hacks that others don’t dare touch.
Sofia Quinn has a killer smile, and by the time you’re done noticing it, she’s got you offering up your wallet, your car, and anything else she desires. She holds LaRoux Industries responsible for the mysterious death of her father and is out for revenge at any cost.
When a LaRoux Industries security breach interrupts Gideon and Sofia’s separate attempts to infiltrate their headquarters, they’re forced to work together to escape. Each of them has their own reason for wanting to take down LaRoux Industries, and neither trusts the other. But working together might be the best chance they have to expose the secrets LRI is so desperate to hide.
I listened to this as an audiobook and followed along in my physical book. In the physical book, the words of the whispers are sometimes on opposite sides of the one page as if it was two of them speaking and you can see the whispers and Lilac have a conversation. But in the audiobook, the whispers' voices are quite creepy along with the background sounds of it, and at the end you get to hear the Butterfly Waltz.
"I probably could have stripped naked and laid down on his desk and he would've just moved his monitor so he could see over me."
The cover of this book is beautiful too. I absolutely love her dress on the front cover of this. And if you look closely on the front cover, you can see he has a tattoo just above his elbow.
The interaction between Sofia and Gideon was quite good. I like how their partnership changed as the book went on too - from enemies, to co-conspirators, back to enemies, before reaching friendship and (hopefully one day) a relationship.
Six lives, six threads. We shall see what fabric they weave.
Spoilers!
My guess that Sofia was Towers was sightly off, but I think I'd still call that a win.
I cried when the Daedalus ship crashed to Corinth and Tarver was crying as it fell with Lilac on board - in denial of what was happening in front of him.
Her hands slide up inside my T-shirt, finding skin, and my brain starts to shut down higher function so I can concentrate on getting her shirt off without breaking the kiss for more than a couple of seconds.
When Lilac tells Tarver that she held on so that she could come back to him I also ended up crying. I can be such a sap when it comes to books sometimes.
Another moment I started to cry? When Sofia was with Gideon at the end and she was thinking about what story she should tell the Collective and she thinks about the Butterfly Waltz.
Gideon: I still like yours better. The one with the lights and fringe.
Sofia: The one that got shredded and full of holes because I was wearing it during a spaceship crash? I think there's more dress missing than there.
Gideon: Why do you think I like it?
End Spoilers!
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All books in this series:
1 | These Broken Stars
1.5 | This Night So Dark
2 | This Shattered World
3 | Their Fractured Light
Title: This Shattered World
Author: Amie Kaufman & Meagan Spooner
Published: 19 Nov 2014
Series: Starbound #2
Rating: 5 stars
Synopsis:
Jubilee Chase and Flynn Cormac should never have met.
Lee is captain of the forces sent to Avon to crush the terraformed planet's rebellious colonists, but she has her own reasons for hating the insurgents.
Rebellion is in Flynn's blood. Terraforming corporations make their fortune by recruiting colonists to make the inhospitable planets livable, with the promise of a better life for their children. But they never fulfilled their promise on Avon, and decades later, Flynn is leading the rebellion.
Desperate for any advantage in a bloody and unrelentingly war, Flynn does the only thing that makes sense when he and Lee cross paths: he returns to base with her as prisoner. But as his fellow rebels prepare to execute this tough-talking girl with nerves of steel, Flynn makes another choice that will change him forever. He and Lee escape the rebel base together, caught between two sides of a senseless war.
You dragged me out of my bar, shot me, forced me to breathe chemical fumes, took me into the middle of nowhere, drugged me, then tied me to a post in an underground cave. How do you THINK I'm feeling?
I listened to this as an audiobook.
As the book goes on, you get to see Flynn and Jubilee go from enemies to allies to friends, which I love. You get to watch the relationship between the two change and grow.
My favourite thing about Lee was her sarcasm. She had similar responses to what I might have said myself.
"My hero," the words pop out, dripping with malice before I can stop them. Mock the guy AFTER you get your water, I remind myself.
I cried when the explosion went off though. If you've read the book, you'll know why.
For some odd reason, I also pictured McBride as Jai Courteney who plays Eric in the Divergent movie. Couldn't tell you why, but that's how I pictured him. Maybe because they're both jerks and super mean?
I'm the one who wants to talk to you. She's the one who wants to break your legs. Let's start with the talking.
I like how this book ties in with the first in this series, These Broken Stars, as we see a bit of Tarver and Lilac, and we also hear things from the Whispers.
Amie and Meagan do a wonderful job of writing these books together and can't wait to read the last one!
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All books in this series:
1 | These Broken Stars
1.5 | This Night So Dark
2 | This Shattered World
3 | Their Fractured Light
Title: This Night So Dark
Author: Amie Kaufman & Meagan Spooner
Published: 7 Oct 2014
Series: Starbound #1.5
Rating: 4 stars
Synopsis:
Tarver still has nightmares about the night, six months before the Icarus crash, when he rescued civilian researchers held hostage by brutal mercenaries. Now he and Lilac reconcile his memories of that night with the truth uncovered after the crash.
This book short connects the first two novels - These Broken Stars and This Shattered World. It also includes chapter preview from book two in the trilogy, This Shattered World.
This was a nice, quick read via my Kindle app on my phone. It didn't take too long to read and it was quite addicting when I got into it as I wanted to see what happened next.
I think my favourite thing about this short is that between the chapters, you can see Lilac and Tarver having a conversation about the dream that he is recounting to her.
Lilac and Tarver are my favourite pair in this series for reasons I don't quite think that I can explain.
It was good that we got to see Tarver deal with civilians, rather than just soldiers like he was used to as it shows how he can deal with whatever odd situations he gets put into.
At the start I did like Gil Fisk as he was a nervous little new recruit, towards the middle I didn't like him for obvious reasons if you red the short, but by the end I didn't mind him as he did help Tarver. To me, that did redeem him just a bit.
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All books in this series:
1 | These Broken Stars
1.5 | This Night So Dark
2 | This Shattered World
3 | Their Fractured Light
Title: Unearthed
Author: Amie Kaufman & Meagan Spooner
Published: 9 Jan 2018
Series: Unearthed #1
Rating: 4 stars
Synopsis:
When Earth intercepts a message from a long-extinct alien race, it seems like the solution the planet has been waiting for. The Undying's advanced technology has the potential to undo environmental damage and turn lives around, and Gaia, their former home planet, is a treasure trove waiting to be uncovered.
For Jules Addison and his fellow scholars, the discovery of an alien culture offers unprecedented opportunity for study... as long as scavengers like Amelia Radcliffe don't loot everything first. Mia and Jules' different reasons for smuggling themselves onto Gaia put them immediately at odds, but after escaping a dangerous confrontation with other scavvers, they form a fragile alliance.
In order to penetrate the Undying temple and reach the tech and information hidden within, the two must decode the ancient race's secrets and survive their traps. But the more they learn about the Undying, the more their presence in the temple seems to be part of a grand design that could spell the end of the human race...
I managed to go to a signing/Q&A for this book on their Australian book tour, and was lucky to buy myself a copy.
Unearthed is described as Indiana Jones meets Lara Croft in space. Seeing as I love both Indiana Jones and Lara Croft, I was very eager to read the book!
This book has a few different puzzles for the main characters to try and get through including one using music and another using math. They needed to finish the puzzle to be able to move onto the next.
Meagan Spooner has said that this duology series and The Starbound Trilogy aren't intended to share universes because "Unearthed is near-future science fiction and the Starbound trilogy takes place far, far into mankind's future". However, personally I imagined that these books are all in the same universe.
I loved that Jules was the neat one with the brains and Mia was the one who wanted to kick butt and take what she needed - by force if she had to. But towards the end you could see that the two were trying to help each other and learning from one another too.
What was revealed in the final two paragraphs of Unearthed was quite shocking and left me desperately wanting the next book. The downside to reading this book as soon as I got it? Now having to wait until 2019 for the next one...
Spoilers!
One guess that I did make that I was correct with was that Charlotte and Mink were the same person.
Another part of the book that was quite intriguing other than the puzzle was the part with the spaceship at the end.
End Spoilers!
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All books in this series:
1 | Unearthed
2 | Undying
Title: These Broken Stars
Author: Amie Kaufman & Meagan Spooner
Published: 1 Dec 2013
Series: Starbound #1
Rating: 5 stars
Synopsis:
It's a night like any other on board the Icarus. Then, catastrophe strikes: the massive luxury spaceliner is yanked out of hyperspace and plummets to the nearest planet. Lilac LaRoux and Tarver Merendsen survive. And they seem to be alone.
Lilac is the daughter of the richest man in the universe. Tarver comes from nothing, a young war hero who learned long ago that girls like Lilac are more trouble than they're worth. But with only each other to rely on, Lilac and Tarver must work together, making a tortuous journey across the eerie, deserted terrain to seek help.
Then, against all odds, Lilac and Tarver find a strange blessing in the tragedy that has thrown them into each other's arms. Without the hope of a future together in their own world, they begin to wonder - would they be better off staying in this place forever?
Everything changes when they uncover the truth behind the chilling whispers that haunt their every step. Lilac and Tarver may find a way off this planet. But they won't be the same people who landed on it.
The first in a sweeping science fiction trilogy, These Broken Stars is a timeless love story about hope and survival in the face of unthinkable odds.
This book had only sat on my shelf for a couple of weeks and I'd also bought the second book in The Starbound Trilogy before picking this up. It was a good thing I did though.
I think both Lilac and Tarver were my favourite characters within this book. Lilac because you could see how she transformed from a pretty party girl who's known throughout the universe into who she had become when the book finished. However I also loved Tarver as he had been through so much before he met Lilac plus he then had to trek across a planet with a party girl in tow with an approaching deadline.
My least favourite character, however, was Lilac's father: Roderic LaRoux. Once I'd found out what'd he'd done I was none too impressed. Now that I think about it, technically he's the one that made his daughter crash land on the planet -- he should tahnk Simon for teaching her about electronics or else she'd be dead (along with Tarver but I doubt that Mr LaRoux would have cared about him too much).
There was no part in this book that I would count as my favourite as it was amazing all round. From the planet's description to the pair of opposite characters only to find out that deep down, maybe their not quite so opposite to each other after all.
I can't find any fault with this book in my mind. Wow. Just, wow... This book was amazing. You should definitely go check it out.
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All books in this series:
1 | These Broken Stars
1.5 | This Night So Dark
2 | This Shattered World
3 | Their Fractured Light
