Book #22: Their Fractured Light by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner

This book was the third in the Starbound trilogy (the first two are here and here), and it was quite possibly my favorite of the three. Each of the three books follows a different couple and their romance, but also their attempts to fight against the evil powers in the galaxy that are trying to control them. This book did a great job of completing the overall story of the trilogy, but it also had its own interesting storyline with a new couple, Sofia and Gideon (both of whom actually had shown up in the previous novels briefly but become the main characters here). Sofia is a con artist who has been working to get close to LaRoux so she can kill him in revenge for her father's death in book 2, and Gideon is the premier hacker in the galaxy, trying to take down LaRoux Industries in revenge for his brother's death. They get thrown together and help each other to survive--and of course fall in love with each other along the way. I really liked Sofia and Gideon as characters, and I liked the dilemmas of truth/trust that they struggled with, debating how much to reveal and who they could reveal it to. But the thing that was the best about this book was that all of the main characters from the other two books come back and play major roles in the action and the resolution of the dilemma. Lilac and Tarver from the first book, and Jubilee and Flynn from the second, and Sofia and Gideon from this one--altogether made a team trying to stop the "whispers" from destroying the world.

Altogether, the three books end with the possible destruction of mankind--just like a good sci/fi trilogy should. I liked this book a lot more than I liked the second one. Of the three romances, the first book (These Broken Stars) and this one were the most interesting and believable, and it was really fun to see everything from all three books come together. Honestly, I don't know that I totally get all the hyperspace creatures/warping the space-time continuum/sci fi aspect of the whole story--I feel like they didn't explain it all that well in the first place and I've been kind of lost on the technical aspects of it the whole time. But I thought the series was obviously well-plotted out, and they clearly had a larger plan in place the whole time, which is something that bugs me about a lot of trilogies that tack on extra drama and stories in the later books. Overall, this series was a fun read that I'm glad I was able to check out.