Their fractured light
This is the last novel in Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner’s Starbound trilogy, a novel that I’ve been waiting to read for more than a year now. The first two novels, These Broken Stars and This Shattered World, was some of the best novels I’ve read. I fell in love with the world-building, the characters, the plot. It was two amazing, rich stories that really moved and made an impact on me. So my expectations for Their Fractured Light was high, and you know what happens when you believe a book is going to be amazing. It’s the exact opposite.
In the first novel, Lilac LaRoux and Tarver Meredsen survive the crash of a spaceship but they’re stranded on a long-forgotten planet. While there they find a strange creature that is unlike any other in the universe. In the second novel, Flynn Cormac is the leader of the native rebels on Avon and Jubilee Chase is a notorious soldier who fears nothing. Avon is filled with some weird creatures and it isn’t until Tarver and Lilac explains that these creatures are the same ones as they encountered after they were shipwrecked and that they’re not dangerous. The four band together in an attempt to save the creatures and take down the man responsible for it all – none other than Lilac’s father.
In Their Fractured Light we meet Gideon and Sofia. He is a famous hacker known as the Knave of Hearts and she is a con artist who has a vendetta against Roderick LaRoux. They stumble upon each other by accident and must work together to get out of a tricky situation. They lie, they cheat and they deceive and despite it all, they’re drawn to each other. They both know about the Whispers, the strange creatures that can be found in LaRoux Industries headquarters, the creatures that can turn anyone into an empty shell. Gideon and Sofia agree that someone have to do something to stop LaRoux and whatever he is up to and they work out a plan to do just that. Neither of them has any idea that four other people are planning to do the same thing, and no one understands the repercussions of their choice to go after LaRoux – or that they never might’ve had a choice to begin with, that this was all destined to happen.
I want to start this by saying that I wanted to love this story. And that there will be spoilers in this review. But yeah, I wanted to love this. It takes place on Corinth, a planet that is in fact an entire city in three levels. It features not only a hacker but also a con artist. They’re working together! They execute crazy schemes! They’re trying to save the universe! Yeah, the plot was good and I thought I was going to love this book even more than the first two. How wrong I was.
The biggest problem with the story was the characters and their development. They both work alone and they’re about sixteen. Too young, I think, but more on that later. They have no friends, no family, they’ve both lost someone close to them. They decide to work together and fall in love in about a week. Well, it’s about a week for Sofia, Gideon is gone the moment he sees her dimples (which he talks about all.the.time). I hate insta-love with a passion and this was horrible. They’ve been alone for so long and Gideon throws everything out the window when he meets Sofia, which doesn’t end well. He basically tells her that he would die for her, despite knowing very well that he doesn’t know her at all. They both lie to each other, it’s true, but Gideon is very naïve when it comes to Sofia. It all felt so made up, which it is, but I shouldn’t feel it. I should believe them and yet there I was, every step of the novel, thinking that this is so unrealistic.
I could never accept the insta-love, so this novel went from promising to awful in about three pages. However, this might’ve still been okay if it hadn’t been for… Sofia. She was awful. Gideon fell head over heels for her even though she did nothing but lie to him and bring chaos into his life. She’s a master thief and she can trick anyone, anyone, into believing her. When she later works with Jubilee and Tarver she forgets that she’s never been in the military and takes command and the other two actually listens to her. Every time she opened her mouth everyone else just seemed to drop what they were doing, listened and agreed, despite the fact that she was the one who started the whole mess with Whisper-war. She was so perfect and wonderful and smart and lovely and pretty and she had the most amazing, yes the cutest! dimples in the whole world! I got sick of her about fifty pages in and she only got worse after that. One of the worst character’s I’ve come across and I, who liked Gideon, judges him so hard for falling for her.
The second problem I had with this novel was the constant repetition of… well, everything. Sofia, in particular, liked to remind me of what was going on. Like, yes, thank you very much but I already know this because I’ve read this far! Every other page was filled with facts that I already knew. You don’t have to tell me why you’re doing what you’re doing because this is the whole plot of the story! I know you need to take down the Whispers to save the universe! I know you why you want to get even with LaRoux! I know all this and do you know why? BECAUSE THAT’S ALL YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT. I got so feed up with this that I was about to DNF this book but I thought I should stick it out. Then, when I had about twenty pages left, another thing happened that again made me want to quite it but I continued. One chapter in this novel was good. One chapter, barely ten pages out of 420, was good.
I know this is a YA novel but I was surprised by the character’s age. They were all around 16-19 and I’m talking about two characters that worked as soldiers. I can’t comprehend how the army would want a seventeen year old soldier or how a seventeen year old could become ambassador for an entire planet. What adult listens to a teenager? I thought their age was very strange in relation to the work they did and it was just yet another thing that struck me as weird with this novel.
The only thing that I liked was the world-building which was amazing. However, some parts didn't quite make sense, a few sentences was backwards and a couple of phrases was on repeat. I am sad that the series is over but I am very glad that I managed to finish this novel. I’ve been reading it for over two months now and it’ll be nice to put it on my shelf and forget about it. I will continue reading books by Kaufman and Spooner because I know they can do better than this but Their Fractured Light was a huge disappointment for me.
In the first novel, Lilac LaRoux and Tarver Meredsen survive the crash of a spaceship but they’re stranded on a long-forgotten planet. While there they find a strange creature that is unlike any other in the universe. In the second novel, Flynn Cormac is the leader of the native rebels on Avon and Jubilee Chase is a notorious soldier who fears nothing. Avon is filled with some weird creatures and it isn’t until Tarver and Lilac explains that these creatures are the same ones as they encountered after they were shipwrecked and that they’re not dangerous. The four band together in an attempt to save the creatures and take down the man responsible for it all – none other than Lilac’s father.
In Their Fractured Light we meet Gideon and Sofia. He is a famous hacker known as the Knave of Hearts and she is a con artist who has a vendetta against Roderick LaRoux. They stumble upon each other by accident and must work together to get out of a tricky situation. They lie, they cheat and they deceive and despite it all, they’re drawn to each other. They both know about the Whispers, the strange creatures that can be found in LaRoux Industries headquarters, the creatures that can turn anyone into an empty shell. Gideon and Sofia agree that someone have to do something to stop LaRoux and whatever he is up to and they work out a plan to do just that. Neither of them has any idea that four other people are planning to do the same thing, and no one understands the repercussions of their choice to go after LaRoux – or that they never might’ve had a choice to begin with, that this was all destined to happen.
I want to start this by saying that I wanted to love this story. And that there will be spoilers in this review. But yeah, I wanted to love this. It takes place on Corinth, a planet that is in fact an entire city in three levels. It features not only a hacker but also a con artist. They’re working together! They execute crazy schemes! They’re trying to save the universe! Yeah, the plot was good and I thought I was going to love this book even more than the first two. How wrong I was.
The biggest problem with the story was the characters and their development. They both work alone and they’re about sixteen. Too young, I think, but more on that later. They have no friends, no family, they’ve both lost someone close to them. They decide to work together and fall in love in about a week. Well, it’s about a week for Sofia, Gideon is gone the moment he sees her dimples (which he talks about all.the.time). I hate insta-love with a passion and this was horrible. They’ve been alone for so long and Gideon throws everything out the window when he meets Sofia, which doesn’t end well. He basically tells her that he would die for her, despite knowing very well that he doesn’t know her at all. They both lie to each other, it’s true, but Gideon is very naïve when it comes to Sofia. It all felt so made up, which it is, but I shouldn’t feel it. I should believe them and yet there I was, every step of the novel, thinking that this is so unrealistic.
I could never accept the insta-love, so this novel went from promising to awful in about three pages. However, this might’ve still been okay if it hadn’t been for… Sofia. She was awful. Gideon fell head over heels for her even though she did nothing but lie to him and bring chaos into his life. She’s a master thief and she can trick anyone, anyone, into believing her. When she later works with Jubilee and Tarver she forgets that she’s never been in the military and takes command and the other two actually listens to her. Every time she opened her mouth everyone else just seemed to drop what they were doing, listened and agreed, despite the fact that she was the one who started the whole mess with Whisper-war. She was so perfect and wonderful and smart and lovely and pretty and she had the most amazing, yes the cutest! dimples in the whole world! I got sick of her about fifty pages in and she only got worse after that. One of the worst character’s I’ve come across and I, who liked Gideon, judges him so hard for falling for her.
The second problem I had with this novel was the constant repetition of… well, everything. Sofia, in particular, liked to remind me of what was going on. Like, yes, thank you very much but I already know this because I’ve read this far! Every other page was filled with facts that I already knew. You don’t have to tell me why you’re doing what you’re doing because this is the whole plot of the story! I know you need to take down the Whispers to save the universe! I know you why you want to get even with LaRoux! I know all this and do you know why? BECAUSE THAT’S ALL YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT. I got so feed up with this that I was about to DNF this book but I thought I should stick it out. Then, when I had about twenty pages left, another thing happened that again made me want to quite it but I continued. One chapter in this novel was good. One chapter, barely ten pages out of 420, was good.
I know this is a YA novel but I was surprised by the character’s age. They were all around 16-19 and I’m talking about two characters that worked as soldiers. I can’t comprehend how the army would want a seventeen year old soldier or how a seventeen year old could become ambassador for an entire planet. What adult listens to a teenager? I thought their age was very strange in relation to the work they did and it was just yet another thing that struck me as weird with this novel.
The only thing that I liked was the world-building which was amazing. However, some parts didn't quite make sense, a few sentences was backwards and a couple of phrases was on repeat. I am sad that the series is over but I am very glad that I managed to finish this novel. I’ve been reading it for over two months now and it’ll be nice to put it on my shelf and forget about it. I will continue reading books by Kaufman and Spooner because I know they can do better than this but Their Fractured Light was a huge disappointment for me.