Of course, Their Fractured Light, the third and final installment, takes place on yet another planet (Corinth), and is the culmination of two novels full of setups. It also adds to the world-building Elysium was uninhabited, but Avon has a culture and a population, and you get a better sense of the civilization. The overall plot arc is bigger than just one planet and two characters, which is why the decision to move “off-world” for the second installment was a smart one – though Tarver and, to a lesser extent, Lilac do make an appearance.

So, naturally, we move to a different planet (Avon) and a different couple in This Shattered World, which follows soldier Jubilee Chase and rebel Flynn Cormac as they investigate the strange happenings as people are seemingly becoming “possessed” and committing atrocities, then have no knowledge of what they’ve done. Things happen that defy explanation, and though some of your questions will be answered by book’s end, that only succeeds in raising more. These Broken Stars is primarily a story of survival, yet questions soon arise as Tarver and Lilac learn more about the planet on which they find themselves stranded. Only two people survive the crash – decorated soldier Tarver Merendsen and Lilac LaRoux, daughter of the shipping magnate whose company built the Icarus. These Broken Stars revolves around the story of the crash of the giant, inter-dimensional cruise ship the Icarus, which mysteriously crashes on a terraformed yet uninhabited planet called Elysium. In the Starbound Trilogy, Kaufman and Spooner ask us to consider what we would do if we suddenly discovered that we were not alone in the universe, and then they spend three books looking at differing viewpoints. This is a science fiction story that does what all good sci-fi must, which is explore the essence of humanity in a theoretical situation.

The questions introduced in These Broken Stars, the first installment in the trilogy, are slowly but surely answered throughout the rest of the series. Starting with These Broken Stars, Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner created a fascinating “we are not alone” arc that spread over three connected, yet also self-contained novels.

These broken stars lilac und tarver