Review: Across the Universe by Beth Revis

Title: Across the Universe (Across the Universe #1)
Author: Beth Revis
Published: January 11th 2011
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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, 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.

Let me start by saying that this book could have sucked, but I still would have given it an extra half point just for this über-awesome dedication which is probably one of my all times favorites. It’s brilliant, sincere and original.

“I never thought about how important the sky was until I didn't have one.”

The book itself was sometimes a bit predictable. When it comes to the murderer, it wasn’t a surprise for me, but let’s just say I was not expecting how one came to the picture. I had two main theories and one of them was almost correct, but not quite. I still thoroughly enjoyed the murder mystery storyline which I thought was a nice addition to a plot without any supernatural characters and I feel like if it weren’t for that life-threatening plotline, it could have easily been just another sci-fi YA book. The crime element definitely spiced things up a little bit and kept me on the edge of my seat.

I’m not a huge fan of aliens, more like an anti-fan, with the exception of Adam and the Black triplets from the Lux series, so stories that even have a hint of them don’t attract me. That’s the very reason I didn’t want to go see Prometheus, but my friends outvoted me and surprisingly I quite enjoyed it since there weren’t that many of these nasty creatures in it to begin with. This book started out pretty much the same as Prometheus – Amy and her parents being frozen and Godspeed taking off to a new destination out of our Solar system. I was glad there weren’t ANY aliens in this one and that was probably the reason I ended up not exactly loving it, but still really liking this book! 

It’s got this dystopian feel to it – a nation being controlled by a leader in a system based on lies. People don’t really see anything wrong with the system, therefore, they do as they’re told and our protagonists are the ones trying to crack the system and its pillars by discovering new information and working it to their advantage. Elder and Amy get to the bottom of the lies and it’s all about to either bring the ship down or make it even stronger than before.

Some of the discoveries made me gasp, roll my eyes or even wince. Also, as much as it pains me to say this, some parts of me agreed with Elder and thought the system wasn’t entirely wrong, but in the end I would have acted the same as Amy. Moreover, even though I’m a romantic at heart, I really enjoyed that it wasn’t the center part of the storyline and that the connection between Amy and Elder grew with time rather than being instant. Oh, and at times I even found this book a bit philosophical, since I started to find these hidden meanings behind different sentences and thoughts.

“That's all you need to know about Godspeed," he says. "Although you should also know this. I am Eldest."
Good for you, I think. Congrats on being old.

This book was hard for me to put down and what’s most important, made me think. I really enjoyed it and I’m eager to read A Million Suns before the end of 2012. Hopefully. Fingers crossed! If you're interested in reading the first chapter, then you can do it here.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars (so there ya go! an extra half point for this brilliant dedication)

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