Across the Universe by Beth Revis

Genre: Science Fiction

Publishing year: 2011

Publisher: Razor Bill

Rating: 5/5

Synopsis:

Amy is cryogenically frozen passenger aboard the spaceship Godspeed. She has left her boyfriend, friends-and planet-behind to join her parents as a member of Project Ark Ship. Amy and her parents believe they will wake on a new planet, Centauri-Earth, three hundred years in the future. But fifty years before Godspeed’s scheduled landing, cryo chamber 42 is mysteriously unplugged, and Amy is violently woken from her frozen slumber. 

Someone tried to murder her.

Now Amy is caught inside an enclosed world where nothing makes sense. Godspeed’s 2,312 have forfeited all control to Eldest, a tyrannical and frightening leader. And Elder, Eldest’s rebellious teenage heir, is both fascinated with Amy and eager to discover whether he has what it takes to lead.

Amy desperately wants to trust Elder. But should she put her faith in a boy who has never seen life outside the ship’s cold metal walls? All Amy knows is that she and Elder must race to unlock Godspeed’s hidden secrets before whoever woke her tries to kill again. 

Review:

I have been hearing a lot of hype about this book, actually the trilogy as a whole, and since I’m always willing to give anything a go, I picked it up. Unlike most popular novels, I feel this one truly lives up to a high standard. It didn’t start out that way though. The first line:

Daddy said, “Let Mom go first.”

The good news is that it immediately launches us into the action with dialogue. The bad news is that we have a semi-grown teenager calling her father ‘Daddy’. I don’t think this will bother many people, but somehow it just managed to wiggle underneath my skin. She automatically seems desperate, clingy, and heavily dependent on others. Not exactly, what I like to see in a heroine, but later on she did show some improvement so I’m willing to let it slide.

What I like about this book is that the plot is not spread paper thin just to make sure there is enough material left for a sequel or two. Too many series can be summed up as a whole in a few paragraphs and quite literally could be edited down to a single average size novel. The action in Across the Universe flows quickly. Like a machine gun, it’s just BAM, BAM, and BAM. 

The alternating perspectives of Amy and Elder also helped to keep up the pace. Neither of them had a dull day since Amy was unfrozen. While Amy is discovering what the fourth floor of the hospital is actually used for, Elder is learning the truth about the Plague from Eldest. Both are monumental plot twists, and I found myself encountering cliffhangers at the end of every chapter. One second Amy is in trouble and I want to speed read through Elder’s chapter so I can find out what happens next to her and then I’m pulled into his difficulties with Eldest and I don’t want his chapter to end. And the cycle just kept repeating. It really kept me on my toes. 

On character growth, I believe Amy has taken a few steps closer to adulthood. She has begun to spend less time mourning her life on Earth and I think she has embraced life aboard Godspeed somewhat. When she realized that her father never expected her to join them on the ship, she was visibly upset. Realizing that her own father had counted her out is the point where I stopped thinking of her as a child. She still refers to him as ‘Daddy’ but I like to think that she isn’t as childishly naïve as she was at the start of the book.

Elder is a tough nut to assess. He has doubts about his leadership ability throughout the course of the book, and I don’t think these doubts and fears could have been vanquished in one book. This is why I am so glad the rest of the trilogy is already published. Still in the end he has stepped into a leadership role, and I think that while there may be plenty of bumps in the road he is capable of being a strong dependable leader. 

The ending. It was surprising, but not horribly so. The book ended on a mixed note. It wasn’t a happy ending, but it was pleasant and left me with hope for the characters. Well I still don’t know about Elder, but I’ll just have to wait and see when I read the second book in the trilogy, A Million Suns. 

Question: Could you ever imagine leaving Earth behind, allowing yourself to be frozen for a few centuries in the hope that you would land on a new planet that may or may not be better than Earth?