Annotation: A ship charts a journey of 300 years with a cryogenic cargo of the worlds best and brightest. Amy the daughter of two new earth essentials has a problem, she has been woken up 50 years too early. To make matters worse someone on the ship is murdering the frozens.
Summary: Across the Universe works in alternating chapters to tell the story of Amy and Elder. Amy is from Earth, her parents are a high ranking military officer and a leading scientist in the field of genetics. Their rank afforded them the opportunity to bring Amy, a “non-essential” or cargo along with them. They have been cryogenically frozen and expect to wake up in 300 years on Centauri Earth, the new earth.
Elder is the leader in training aboard the Godspeed, a shop with 2,312 generation passengers. Generation passengers are those people that are born on the ship and their function is keeping things running in the form of maintaining the livestock and food resources that will be used on Centauri Earth. Over the course of 250 years there have been some changes. The leaders of the ship have elected to help the generation passengers become better through training a single leader in the understanding of what they term the three causes of discord.
The ships current leader Eldest leads the ship, trains his future replacement Eldest, but there is something else going on. Someone is trying to sabotage the cryogencially frozen people in the cargo hold.
Somehow Amy is unfrozen. Then others are unfrozen, but they are not as lucky as Amy who survives improper thaw. Now it is up to Amy and Elder to figure out who is sabotaging the frozens and the other secrets that seem to thrive on this ship. The ship is full of lies.
Evaluation: I enjoy science fiction this is my first space opera style sci-fi book. The world building of life on the ship was well done with the concepts of how the ship works and what they eat being loosely explained but just enough that things aren’t confusing and I can picture it. The only thing that was beyond comprehension for me was the size of the ship. It is supposedly the size of a small island like, guam. The story itself flipping between Amy and Eldest is easy to follow and though there are some questions about Elder initially it did not detract from the story. The way Amy is portrayed comes across as something of an ‘every-teen’ and Elder has a certain future quality to his thoughts and actions. The story progresses nicely hooking you early in the reading. My only qualm is that the ending felt rushed and some things were wrapped up to neatly too quickly. As I neared the last page my reading was in a state of disbelief over the sudden changes in how characters responded to situations. Their responses seemed too perfect and simple also it ends with very little in the way of true cliff-hanger and while I am excited for the next book I am not counting down the days to its release. The end and the way the characters seemed to change from how I perceived them in the whole book suddenly at the last minute in the last few pages just really lowered my interest in the continuation of the story.
Overall though I found it to be a good book and I am hoping that some of the wrap ups at the end of this book will be unwrapped and fully developed in book two.
Cover Judgement:
I was really drawn to this cover. The purple galaxy and stars and the two faces in profile
intrigued me. As an added bonus if you remove the dust jacket from the book there is a diagram for how the ship would be laid out, a blueprint of sorts. That alone was quite helpful in imagining the ship and how it would function.
The cover at right is the paperback edition. This cover is a lot less arresting. I get a vague sci-fi feel from the long metal stylized hallway as well as the hatch that appears to look out on the universe, but for me it doesn’t compel me to pick it up the way the cover at left does. The cover at left also imparts more of the romantic/sexualized undertones of the book.
Next book currently scheduled for release in January 2012 is
A Million Sun
sThe plot of this one appears to improve on the ending of Across the Universe. Barnes and Noble has the description for this new book in the series starting with things in chaos on Godspeed. I hope that is the case, since it would be a lot more arresting than things starting with a perfectly in order ship where Elder stepped in as leader and everything went smoothly. Makes me more intrigued to get my hands on this new book.
Beth Revis the author of the
Across the Universe series will be at
YALL Fest 2012 at Blue Bicycle Books on Nov 12, 2012. This is one of the books I read as a personal challenge to have read a book by every author in attendance at this years YALL Fest. I only have 3 books left to read and there will be more reviews posted in the upcoming days leading up to YALL Fest!
The hardcover has a really intense cover. It is true to the floating head Young adult cover craze but there are some nice additions. The ‘T’ in nightshade has an intriguing type font that made me think something vampiric would come up with the shape inclined to make me think of a stake rather than a cross. Additionally the golden eyes of the girl in the picture are intense and the blood drenched calla lilies definitely leave a good impression. This book has definite eye catching appeal and I would pick it up based on the cover alone.
