Across the Universe (Across the Universe #1)
by Beth Revis
Summary: A love out of time. A spaceship built of secrets and murder....
Seventeen-year-old Amy joins her parents as frozen cargo aboard the vast spaceship Godspeed and expects to awaken on a new planet, 300 years in the future. Never could she have known that her frozen slumber would come to an end 50 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.
Source: I purchased a paperback.
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Review:
I loved Across the Universe. A lot. I had it on my shelf for a long time, but I kept skipping over it in favor of something else. Suddenly, I had this incredible urge to read it and I fell into the story immediately. I devoured it.The plot, themes, and setting of Across the Universe appealed me quite a bit. I loved the elements of a dystopian regime aboard a traveling space ship set to land a new Earth.
It is hard to believe that I enjoyed the book so much considering I found Amy to be one of my least favorite heroines in popular YA fiction. I didn’t like her voice or narration at all because it felt so young. When the novel first began, I thought it took place somehow in the past because she seemed more like she was 12 or 13 than 17. Then, once I realized she was 17 in those sections, I thought maybe she just came across that way because it was just a big decision to figure out if you were going to be frozen and sent to another planet with your parents or if you’d stay behind with other family on Earth. Maybe in those instances, you’d really attach yourself to your parents. But later, when she was unfrozen, she wasn’t any different. It just got on my nerves.
Fortunately, Across the Universe had a dual narration format. Elder was the soon to be leader of the people on the spaceship Godspeed. He was curious, a bit rebellious, and was eager to learn more about how to lead the ship. Eldest, the current leader, should have been training him and wasn’t doing a very good job. Elder felt like he knew nothing. I really enjoyed the sections told from Elder’s point of view. I liked looking at the world through his eyes and I liked how different he was from anyone else on the ship. The conflict in Across the Universe was awesome. I liked the mystery of who was unplugging the frozen people, but I also enjoyed the way the societies were set up. I was curious as to why certain levels were isolated and why some members of society were blank and passive.
Because dystopian novels are kind of my thing, I was very intrigued by the set up in Across the Universe and I really liked the way it all unfolded. Some areas were definitely predictable, but that could have been due to my frequent reading and knowledge of dystopian themes and outcomes. While it seems like I didn’t enjoy the characters, I really did. Amy wasn’t the best character, but I loved Elder, Doc, and the patients in the mental ward. On Godspeed, the crazy people were normal and the normal people were a bit zombie like. Harley, Elder’s best friend, was creative and energetic. He was very sweet towards Amy when he certainly didn’t have to be. Even the recorder, Orion intrigued me.
I highly recommend the book. It wasn’t one of those YA novels fueled by romance and distraction, but one that really explored various concepts about how to lead and at what cost. There were various philosophical concepts that intrigued me. And while parts of the plot were predictable, there were some major twists and developments I didn’t see coming and I enjoyed that, too. I am very happy I bought book two!
Labels: Review, Science Fiction, YA
