Picture drawn by Maggie Stiefvater, 2009. Header made by S.F. Robertson, 2010.

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

These Broken Stars by Meagan Spooner and Amie Kaufman

These Broken Stars by Meagan Spooner and Amie Kaufman
"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 into 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."- summary from Amazon

I really liked this co-written debut, but don't feel like it's for everyone. Being that Lilac and Tarver are alone on this planet, there's a lot of internal monologue from each of them and they only have each other to talk to for the vast majority of the novel. It is very similar to Spooner's Skylark, which I also enjoyed. There's a lot of space and time to really flesh out these two characters and give readers a chance to really get to know them. But not a lot happens in the book- it's very character-driven and deals a lot with their emotional arc as they journey across the planet and figure out how to get home.

The chapters generally flip back and forth between Lilac and Tarver (a couple times, it may stick with one or the other for a couple chapters) with little one-page transcripts between Tarver and an interrogator cropping up between each chapter. I liked those- it was an interesting choice to include those and generally were used to discuss something that had happened or was about to happen.

Overall, I'm interested to see where the story goes from here (there's two more books in the trilogy), especially as the next book, This Shattered World out in November, focuses on two new characters (just found that out from Goodreads).

FTC: Borrowed book from library. Link above is an Amazon Associate link; any profit goes toward funding contests.

1 comment:

  1. I really enjoyed this one. It's not a hardcore survival novel, but I liked how the time alone really gave them time to connect and know each other.

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