Crashed/Shattered (Gripping Trilogy #2), by Robin Wasserman

This is the second book in The Gripping Trilogy (soon to be known as The Cold Awakening Trilogy apparently) and you can read my review of the first one here.  For those of you unfamiliar, this is a dystopian about a girl named Lia Kahn who has been saved from her mangled body and ultimately death, by being copied into a mechanical body.  In the first book she was learning how to use her new body and how to deal with all the negative consequences of life as a mech or skinner.  In this book, Lia is much more sure of herself, but the world is changing and public opinion is changing.  A political uprising has resulted in a fight for mech rights and attempts to prevent any new mechs from coming into existence and Lia finds herself caught in the middle, not knowing who she can trust.  This book was fast-paced and interesting, filled with deceit and mystery, but I didn't like it as much as the first one.  It lost the element of the unknown that filled the first book.  There were so many things to figure out with Lia having a new, strange body and having to learn to be the new person she is, even though that person isn't even a person anymore.  This time around it was more about the politics, mech-rights (shadowing other civil rights movements throughout our own history) and the mystery elements coming into play and, for me, that wasn't as interesting.  I still moved along the text through the emotions and personal relationships though and I was still eager to find out what happened as I read, it just wasn't for the same reasons this time and that was a slight disappointment to me.  I'm interested to see how the last book wraps things up, but this book wasn't good enough to get me reading the last one right away, so who knows when I'll finally find out?  I would recommend Crashed a.k.a. Shattered for fans of dystopians, sci-fi, robots, futuristic fiction, political dramas and philosophy.

Favorite things:  the stunning covers for this series; the elements of technology and robotics; the inner turmoil of the protagonist; the development of a supporting character that I really liked named, Riley; the descriptions of tattoos, underwater cities, slimy iridescent water, synflesh and life as a robot without a heartbeat or physical reactions; the ethical conundrums presented by turning a machine into a person, especially when some people consider that machine to still be only machine; the twists and turns and the intriguing writing style of Robin Wasserman.

Criticisms:  the main theme, atmosphere and tone shifted from the first book and I wasn't a fan of the new direction the series has taken; the confusing double set of names for these books that made it hard to remember what they were called, find them while browsing my NookColor shop and to even blog about them as well and the political undertones that came through so strongly in Crashed/Shattered weren't really my cup of tea.

Overall:  4 out of 5 stars...  it just fell short of the first book in this series, but I still have high hopes for the final book.