How do you kill a city? Do you go for the head, the mind, the core of intelligence? Or strike it in the heart, and destroy the human bonds between the citizens. Shatter City, the second book in the Imposters Series by Scott Westerfeld, takes readers through the process. Manipulation, deceit, and surveillance are the only ways to grow as a leader when the only goal is power.
Background Information: Shatter City is technically the sixth book in a post-modern fiction series written by Scott Westerfeld. The first trilogy, Uglies, Pretties, and Specials, follows Tally Youngblood. The next in the series, Extras, takes place a few years later, in the aftermath of the original trilogy. Many years later, Scott Westerfeld is at it again. This time, everything we know about the mind rain is gone. Cities have monarchies and dictatorships, instead of the previous republics. Times have changed, and it’s time for another revolution.
Synopsis of Shatter City
Insert Raffi and Frey, daughters of Shreve. Except the world only knows about Raffia, First Daughter and heir to the throne. Frey is the spare, the body double, the sniper bate. Genetically identical twin, trained to protect her sister at any cost. We learn exactly what that cost is during Imposters, the first book in the next set in the series.
Shatter City takes place in the free city of Paz, known as the happy city, where the citizens value their privacy. Unlike Shreve, where spy dust monitors citizens at all times, the people of Paz don’t rely on surveillance. They also have a surgery known as feels, which allows the person to control their feelings on command, with the click of a button. Frey heads to Paz to find Raffia, who had disappeared at the end of the first book but left breadcrumbs as clues for her twin sister to find her.
One line that stood out to me, the city’s AI system states “medical care and government are mutually exclusive”. Imagine that, a place where the government and medical industry don’t cross lines or communicate at all.
But tragedy strikes Paz in the form of an earthquake, and Frey doesn’t believe its natural. No one believes her. Her father may be evil, but he can’t control the earth’s tectonic plates, right? As she sets out to stop her father, while still looking for her sister, and discovering how truly important it is to have alliances, she ends up learning what it really means to feel.
Reader Thoughts
Shatter City has a lot of filler. It is glorious, action filled filler, but as a whole felt as though the main purpose of the book is to link between Imposters and the 3rd book (name TBD). In fact, the final word of Shatter City is “… Imposters” which aligns with this assessment. Frey is an Imposter through and through.
Character development lacked in this book, compared to in Imposters. Frey becomes reliant on her feels, which gets called out by Boss X and Col, and her character is described frequently by whichever feel she is using. However, after the in-depth character development in Imposters, I felt as though it fell short. She didn’t grow, and we didn’t learn more about her. She fell backwards in her confidence. We did learn more about Raffi, through Frey’s eyes, but even that may not be accurate as Frey realizes she knows less about her sister than she had thought.
I thoroughly enjoyed how the cities themselves have personalities, much like characters. Paz is a free city. Shreve is intense. Diego focuses on humanity. Victoria is free spirited and organic. My mind constantly tried to place each city in the modern world based on the language spoken or regional landmarks, but it’s impossible. I wish I knew which city I would be part of, because I would totally embrace that fandom. Unless it was Shreve; down with Shreve!
As with all Scott Westerfeld’s books, the plot takes twists and turns as the result of human flaw. Frey is not perfect. She often makes mistakes which ruin someone else’s plan. She makes decisions that don’t give her what she wants. There are also moving parts, everywhere, and without safe communication there is a lot of parties making plans and other parties trying something different. The reader never really knows what is going to happen.
The cliffhanger at the end of Imposters made me excited for the next book, but also incredibly anxious. Thankfully, the cliffhanger at the end of Shatter City gave me peace. Instead of working the reader up, up, up and then leaving us with nothing, Westerfeld has Frey explain what they are planning. Will it actually happen? Will it work? Who knows. We’ve gotta read it to find out. And the plan laid out on the last page makes us want to read the next book. But it still provides closure as the characters plan to leave Shatter City and head back to Shreve, one last time.
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