Series: Across the Universe #1
Author: Beth Revis
Author Info: Website / Twitter / Goodreads / Facebook
Pub Date: Jan. 11, 2011
Publisher: Razorbill
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 398
Purchase: Amazon / Barnes and Noble
Summary:
Seventeen-year-old Amy joins her parents as frozen cargo aboard the vast spaceship Godspeed and expects to awaken on a new planet, three hundred years in the future. Never could she have known that her frozen slumber would come to an end fifty years too soon and that she would be thrust into the brave new world of a spaceship that lives by its own rules.
Amy quickly realizes that her awakening was no mere computer malfunction. Someone-one of the few thousand inhabitants of the spaceship-tried to kill her. And if Amy doesn't do something soon, her parents will be next.
Now Amy must race to unlock Godspeed's hidden secrets. But out of her list of murder suspects, there's only one who matters: Elder, the future leader of the ship and the love she could never have seen coming.
Review:
49 years and 266 days left on the ship, my first thought is everything has to happen in this confined space there is no way to get off. Across the Universe is as much as a murder mystery as it is YA romance. At first I thought it started out a little slow but I think that was simply because I was anxious for Amy to make her real appearance in the book. The Sci-fi nerd in me was hooked from the first chapter where they are freezing people to send them out on this mission.
This is a dual POV from both Elder and Amy. I found it appropriate and well done, Elder seemed like a boy to me (which he is) and I didn’t find him come off with feminine voice at all. I think it’s hard to write for another gender. I really liked Elder, there was something about his character, strong but flawed…curious for the truth but also naïve. His whole existence is this ship where all the people pretty much act like Zombies and look the same. With the exception of the “crazies”, sometimes I would get frustrated with him because I figured things out before he did. I wanted to yell connect the dots Elder connect that dots but I would have to think about the fact that this life is the only thing he is known. Why would he doubt it?
Amy is definitely a hot head, when we meet her in the first chapter I thought of her as a whinny immature kid. It’s interesting how she changes after she is unfrozen; I think the circumstances of her predicament add to that. She is different from everyone else on the ship, she knows that information they are getting is false. She knows what Sol-Earth was really like. I think if I was stuck in her situation I might go a little stir crazy myself. She thinks she needs her parents but she finds she is stronger than she thinks.
It had a good set of side characters, even the ones I didn’t really like. Harley of course, he seems the most normal and most crazy at the same time. I do admit Orion, Eldest and Doc are all really creepy but they are definitely essential to the story.
I liked the plot and the idea that this ship is flying centuries to get to some planet that may or may not be habitable. There are a ton of things revealed and I definitely do not want to give them all away. It’s part of the mystery of the book. Most of things I spotted and there a things I still have questions about but this is only book one. So there is still plenty to learn I’m sure. There was one thing that happened at the end that I was completely surprised by, I didn’t even think of it as a possibility and I’m not sure why.
This is definitely a sci-fi lover’s book, which I am. If you are looking for something different then your vampires, werewolves and angels oh my, then I definitely suggest this series.