Thursday, January 03, 2013

Review: Across the Universe (Across the Universe #1)

Author: Beth Revis


Genre: Sci-Fi, Dystopia, Romance


Pages: 416


Publisher: Razorbill


Date of Release: January 11, 2012


Rating: 8/10


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, 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. -Goodreads


Review:  Most of the books I read now are set in the future. And this one is no exception. It features a girl who is frozen alongside her parents. The only difference with her is that she is no one. She does serve a purpose ot the ship. Her mother is genetic scientist and her father a miltary man. So it shouldn't matter if she dies or not. And that is exactly what happens. Someone unfreezes Amy fifty years before she is supposed to be unfrozen. Elder upon seeing Amy drowning inside her cubicle is taken by her red hair and pale skin.

Do you see how this little love story comes into place?

I thought that was very smart on the author's part. I mean if Amy had dark hair and dark skin then Elder wouldn't take notice because everyone else on the ship is already like that. Imagine walking down the aisle of all these frozen people. seeing all different kinds of races and then suddenly a beautiful girl just happens to be mysteriously awaken. Yup, smart way to introduce the love story.

Even though, I thought that the love story was well-developed, I think that the mystery part could have been a bit more important. I understand that Amy and Elder just met and were learning about each other and about how different their lives were. But someone was going around murdering Earth people and it seemed as if Elder was slacking off his Scooby-Doo skills to go be lovey-dovey with Amy. Scooby-Dooby-Doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

(I heart Scooby-Doo, Shaggy, Velma, Daphne, Fred!!!)

Eldest freaked me out. He kind of seemed like a dictator. No, he was a dictator. If you are going to a new world to start a colony or something over there, then you wouldn't want to start backwards. We worked so hard to be free and all that good stuff, but starting the new world off with a dictatorship. Big no-no. Eldest would demand Elder to do all these thing that I thought were irrelevent to become the best leader ever. When Eldest drank himself to sleep in his room. Way to be role-model.

The scenes that made really believe in Elder's character and how he wanted to be out of the clausterphobic ship was when he looked to the "stars". Even though they were fake (he didn't know that) he had so much hope. Even though he probably wouldn't get to see the New world he had so much faith that what Eldest and him were doing was for the greater good of scoiety. It was a bit of dramatic irony right there. As the reader we could see from Amy and Elder's point of view, but they couldn't see the reality of each other's worlds. Elder's world was this controlled way of living. With the population not having the freedom to do anything. I mean the "Mating Season"? What is that? Even over here in present day Earth we have never had a Mating Season. Well, not that I know of. *shudder* Eldest's way of things was animal-like. Like a zoo or soemthing. Amy's world... I don't think I have to explain it because we are living it at this very moment. But think about it: Some futuristic boy tells you all these lies about what your world was like and you can't correct him or else your gonna be shot out into the stars because you are disturbing the "peace".

Now the ending just got me mad. Grizzly-bear mad. We finally think the ship is at normal speed and Elder is controlling everything and he has the girl and everyone is slowly becoming independent and then... "Oh sorry the ship is actually going too fast". What? What? They did not just tell me that instead of reaching the planet slowly, they just went zooom right by it. Beth Revis has left us this cliffhanger that is making my brain crumbe. I do not know how Elder and Amy are gonna fix this problem.

Second book in the Across the Universe series: A Million Suns


“Power isn’t control at all — power is strength, and giving that strength to others.
 A leader isn’t someone who forces others to make him stronger; a leader is
someone willing to give his strength to others that they may have the strength
 to stand on their own.”



                                             

1 comment:

  1. whoohoo, my favourite writer is back at it. I like the quote you provided too, food for thought indeed.
    See ya
    Mikey

    ReplyDelete