My Week in Book Review: Between Burning Worlds

Between Burning Worlds by Jessica Brody and Joanne Rendell

Laterre is on the brink of war. The Third Estate are rioting against the injustices of a corrupt system. The Patriarche, reeling from the murder of his only heir, makes brutal attempts to quash the unrest, while a new militant faction launches a series of deadly attacks. And three outlaws find themselves pulled into the fray . . . Marcellus is now a traitor to his planet, willing to do anything to stop his grandfather from seizing control of Laterre, even if it means joining the Vangarde, a rebel group back from the dead. Chatine is a prisoner on Bastille. Desperate to survive the harsh conditions of the moon, she becomes embroiled in the Vangarde’s dangerous attempt to free their infamous leader. Alouette is a fugitive who has been lied to her entire life. Searching for the truth about her mysterious past, she soon finds herself hunted by the Regime for reasons she’s only beginning to understand. But when Laterre is threatened by the emergence of a deadly new weapon, these three renegades must risk everything, traveling to the far reaches of the System Divine and into the white hot center of a planet ready to ignite.

Whew! This was quite the book. It was 1950 pages long on my Overdrive app, which is way longer than most books I read. However, it was excellent. I enjoyed the first book, which I reviewed last week, but this sequel outdid itself. Let me tell you why.

First, this book strikes the perfect balance between a high concept story and being VERY character-driven. I know I talked about that last week, but I just want to applaud it again. While a lot was going on at the big-picture level, I never felt like I lost touch with the personal character arcs and inner feelings of Chatine, Marcellus, and Alouette.

Second, this book surprised me! There were some plot twists I saw coming, but others that sent me for a loop. The main one, which comes near the end of the book, makes complete sense when you find out about it, but it’s not something I would have ever connected the dots on. And it’s so cool!

Third, we got a lot of new, interesting characters! I’ll be honest, around the start of the book, when we got three new characters who seemed like they were going to become main characters real fast, my first thought was “Whoa!” Why do we need all these new people? But I quickly fell in love with them, and then I didn’t care. Etienne is a member of a group who’s chosen to hide from the Regime by living in the middle of the frozen tundra of the planet, Gabriel is a thief who was kind to Alouette when they were both kids (think Peeta and Katniss’s backstory), and Cerise is a member of the middle class who sympathizes with the commoners and also happens to be an expert hacker masquerading as an airhead. Each of them meets one of our main characters, and pretty soon, they’re all one big, happy team trying to save their world and um, kind of succeeding. Kind of not. It’s only the second book, after all. They had to leave some problems for book three.

And that brings me to the fourth good thing. This book, like the last, ended on a wonderful cliffhanger. The third book isn’t out yet, which is a tragedy, but I’ll be 100% looking to read it when it does. The way Between Burning Worlds is haunting and absolutely a call to the French Revolution. I won’t tell you what happens, but remember that blue laser guillotine from book one?

It’s back.