REVIEW: ACROSS THE UNIVERSE by Beth Revis

Title: Across the Universe

Author: Beth Revis
Series: Across the Universe #1
Genres: YA, Science Fiction, Dystopia
Publisher: Razorbill
Source: Library Physical copy
Pages: 389

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BLURB: 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.

HANNAHCASSIE'S REVIEW

 

Everybody has read this book. Like seriously everybody. And I also only heard good things so when I saw it in the library I just had to get it.

 

THE WORLD: I would say rather complicated. So we are on the huge ship which is traveling to the new planet to basically colonize it. That will take about 350 years. Don't ask me why they need to colonize it, no idea. Anyways, so all high class scientists and military and frozen in these tanks till they read the new planet. In the meantime we have people that live on the ship, aka the carriers basically. So now we are 300 years in the journey. Everybody who lives there were born on the ship, nobody has actually seen the earth. Basically everything is decided by the Eldest who is literary the eldest of his generation because wait for it...reproduction is actually regulated and seasoned. Very creepy. Anyways, so that is that. Everybody is basically working on their tasks their whole life and so on and the whole ship and the world in this book is just bizarre and well nonsense. I study science and believe me when I say that it is complete science fiction.

CHARACTERS: So there are two main characters: Amy and Elder (Eldest in training). Let me just tell you from the start - I had zero care for any of them. Basically Amy gets unfrozen before her time and is all "what is happening?". Elder tries to find out who did it and also be a good dog following the eldest. Okay this is actually painful to write about them. Basically let me sum it up: they both are super stupid and oblivious and just don't know, if such people were to start human population on colonized planet that I am lucky not to be there. Seriously, terrible just terrible characters.

LOVE: So obviously because Elder never saw anybody like Amy before (all people on the ship look the same) he insta falls in love with her. Blah.

PLUS: It was really funny reading how Earth history was twisted for manipulation. Hitler was the best dude ever, America basically eliminated the black skin people and all that. And Amy never picked up on that...like seriously girl, how stupid are you?

MINUS: This book is just pure ridiculousness for me.

OVERALL: Read it and would be glad to forget about it. Never picking up any of this series books again.

 

LAURA'S REVIEW

I read this book a while ago. I remember I only read it because there was nothing else at the time so I had no expectations whatsoever.

THE WORLD: HannahCassie summarized it well. We're on this huge space ship called Godspeed –oh the irony– that's been travelling for three centuries and it's about to arrive to the new "Earth". Obviously you can expect complications and twists because humans make more errors than a drunken man trying to tack needle and thread. Godspeed is commanded by Eldest who's basically a dictator because the rest of the ship has to do whatever he wants and the next in command is Elder, the substitute of Eldest when he dies.

CHARACTERS: The main character is Amy Martin, 17 year old girl cryonized and travelling with her parents. Her parents were chosen because they had military or scientific experience so their mission is to use their knowledge in the new planet to be able to colonize it. Amy doesn't have any knowledge so she's an "inessential" and it's only there because of her parents basically. I have to agree with Hannah that Amy is not an interesting character at all at first... I think she starts getting more interesting towards the end but meh, she's forgettable. Then we have Elder, boy in training to be the Eldest, thus leader of the ship. He's also not interesting, like Hannah said he has an insta-crush on Amy because she's different (duh, everyone in that ship looks the same due to inbreeding). You all know we don't like insta-crushes, it's a big no no. He tries to help Amy and prevent any other be uncryonized like Amy was but also he is afraid to disobey orders from Eldest so he's caught in between. We also have another character worth mentioning but I won't tell you why, you'll have to discover why by yourselves, his name is Orion.

LOVE: Insta-love between Amy and Elder. It's so obvious that is not even a spoiler.

PLUS: Okay, here is where it comes the boom... the thing is that I started this book, read like two or three chapters and put it down because I couldn't get into it... after months I picked it up again and then got into it. I think that might be why I liked it more in the end... because I was not expecting plot-twists and anything entertaining to happen. I'm not saying you should read it the same way I did but if you cannot get into it I recommend to put it down and pick it up a while after.

So yeah my plus was that since I had no expectations I was not ready for plot twists (it was a bit obvious but I didn't remember the beginning lol). Plus was the plot twist! Yay some fun!

MINUS: All the rest... the characters have little growth. It's true that the book starts and ends in only two weeks I think (?) so there is not much room for growth. Also this is not sci-fi... it's more fiction than anything else.

OVERALL: 3.5 stars. I had many many issues with the book at first but I think the whole "ditching and picking it up afterwards" helped a lot because when I re-started it I had forgotten many of those issues and I got into it faster. Don't ask me how it worked but it did.

What did you think of ACROSS THE UNIVERSE?