My Rating: ★ ★ 1/2 stars
Okay so this is going to be a rant review, since I seem to have a lot of things that I want to say about this book
Let me start off by saying that I did not think this book was good. I really enjoyed Across the Universe and A Million Suns for what they were (even if I didn't think they were one of the best books out there) and found them to be enjoyable. HOWEVER, Shades of Earth was just...bad, meh, trashy. I didn't like it.
First of all, I just couldn't bring myself to give two shits about Amy or Elder, either as characters or as a couple. The two of them virtually sounded like carbon copies of one another so much so that it was hard to tell who was actually narrating the chapters (I often had to flip back to see whose POV I was reading). The romance between the two of them felt incredibly flat and forced. SPOILER ALERT. The scene where the two of them suddenly jump each other's bones also really non-climactic (no pun intended). Like, the two of them suddenly just felt an urge to tear each other's clothes off like *snap* that? Idk, I don't really buy it, sorry. And letting a guy kiss you after you've just had sex and not being at least the slightest bit annoyed about it is also just not okay.
The whole exploration of Centauri-Earth was also just really boring. I had hoped and even expected for the Earthborns and Shipborns to go out there and explore the friggin' planet. We had two books building up this great backstory for the Shipborns, about how they lived and their hopes and expectations. Then the second book hyped up the planet that they were going to go to. And then in this book, suddenly it's all about these aliens (with some tension between the Earth-people and the Shipborns). The characters were constantly in the same selective areas, and there wasn't that much mention of the planet itself. We get a couple of mentions about some flowers, birds, and the pterodactyls that are roaming around, but nothing more. Really? You're telling me that this massive planet doesn't have at least some other land-walking animals? Or some other kind of natural things one has to look out for (like thorny bushes or whatever).
The deaths that happened in this book were also just so....nothing. There was maybe one paragraph that was well-written, describing Amy's feelings and emotions in a very deep way, but otherwise she got over the losses quite quickly, considering who they were. I didn't really find myself caring at all.
SPOILER. Also, something that irked me to no end - and I know I was probably just annoyed at this because the book as a whole was annoying me - was that Elder released all of those five hundred bodies to the stars when he was flying that small spaceship without even asking or informing anyone. Like, did no one think to ask the surviving friends or family if maybe they wanted a funeral? To maybe bury them?! Not cool.
And while the ending did actually interest me and pick up in its pace, I did not really find the conclusion of the story to be realistic at all. SPOILER. You're telling me that you're going to make peace with the people who literally murdered over five hundred of your own people?! I mean, I get that they end up being "two colonies" in the end (whatever that means), but that that's all that happens? Also how the heck are they gonna colonize this planet with those animal fetuses having been destroyed? Lol.
Overall, this book was just meh to me. The first two books were pretty good and I think they set up a much more interesting tone, narrative and setting than this third book did. I'm glad I finished this book, so that I was able to conclude this trilogy. However, I won't be rereading it again unfortunately.
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