Shades of Earth by Beth Revis

Summary:
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.

Amy and Elder must race to discover who--or what--else is out there if they are to have any hope of saving their struggling colony and building a future together. They will have to look inward to the very core of what makes them human on this, their most harrowing journey yet. Because if the colony collapses? Then everything they have sacrificed--friends, family, life on Earth--will have been for nothing.

FUELED BY LIES.
RULED BY CHAOS.
ALMOST HOME. (from GoodReads)

Review:
Ah, another trilogy comes to a close. Luckily for these books, Shades of Earth (the last one) was definitely the best. While I enjoyed the other novels, I was drawn into Shades of Earth in a way that I hadn't before. I think it was the fact that the characters were actually on a new planet and that was very interesting.

Whenever I read books that take place on spaceships (which isn't really that many), I always feel super claustrophobic. No matter what was going on on Earth, I probably wouldn't want to escape it to live in Space. However, in Shades of Earth, the characters land on Centauri-Earth and the feeling of claustrophobia disappears. The new planet is pretty similar to Earth and it has to be so that humans can function but there are different plants and animals. It felt like a ghost town in that there was a human colony there previously and they left behind some buildings. So spooky.

Even moreso than the previous novels, Shades of Earth is a mystery, which I loved. Who is systematically killing off members of the crew? What secrets is Amy's dad keeping? Are there humans or aliens on the new planet? I couldn't put the book down because I wanted to know the answers to all these questions. Even so, the twists weren't really that surprising to me - I pretty much guessed all of them, but that usually happens to me.

As always, Elder is the interesting character to read about. Not that I don't love Amy, but as the leader of the ship born people, Elder has a more important role. He has to spar with Amy's dad, who is the military leader of the Cryos and he holds his own as a leader. The relationship between Amy and Elder develops nicely and isn't prone to the instalove that many YA books have.

One thing that annoyed me was Amy saying the first moon landing was in the 1950s. Um, no, it was 1969. Also what happened to the gorgeous colorful covers of the first two books?? I'm seriously disappointed in that change. Regardless, I still enjoyed this trilogy and think Shades of Earth was an amazing conclusion.

Rating: 9 out of 10.
FTC: borrowed from the library.

2013/Razorbill/369 pages.