Shades of Earth - Beth Revis

[goodreads]

Title: Shades of Earth (Across the Universe #3)
Author: Beth Revis
Genre: Sci-fi
Rating: 4/5
# pages: 369 pages
Date read: January, 2013

Amy and Elder have finally left the oppressive walls of the spaceship Godspeed behind. They're ready to start life afresh--to build a home--on Centauri-Earth, the planet that Amy has traveled 25 trillion miles across the universe to experience.

But this new Earth isn't the paradise Amy had been hoping for. There are giant pterodactyl-like birds, purple flowers with mind-numbing toxins, and mysterious, unexplained ruins that hold more secrets than their stone walls first let on. The biggest secret of all? Godspeed's former passengers aren't alone on this planet. And if they're going to stay, they'll have to fight.

"Shades of Earth" picks up immediately after where "A Million Suns" leaves off, so I'm glad I got to read the two so quickly after each other. In many ways it's not a separate book, but a continuation of AMS.

Unfortunately I wasn't quite as blown away by this one as by the first two books in the series. It's still extremely well written, and I couldn't put it down once I got started - resulting in a couple of nights that ended up being much later than they ought to have been - but there were a number of issues in it that I didn't think were properly handled... I didn't like the way they were handled at least. A brief period of time I thought I would end up having to give this just one lone star, but fortunately Beth Revis didn't go there, and redeemed herself in the end. But I couldn't quite justify giving her the last star, so 4 it is.

But it's a thrilling - and chilling - ride, with lots of surprises along the way. At least, I certainly hadn't seen even half of them coming. I didn't think the characters were quite as well defined as in the two first books though, and missed some of the lighter banter we had seen there.

Still well worth the read though.