Across the Universe by: Beth Revis

Across the Universe by: Beth Revis
Publication Date: January 11, 2011
Publisher: Razorbill
Page count: 398
Format: Hardcover
Series: Across the Universe #1
Buy the book: Amazon

 Summary from Goodreads:

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.

My Review:

I will admit that going into the book I had not been expecting a whole lot. I’d picked it up at the library on a random excursion a few weeks ago, although when I finally got around to reading it, I couldn’t put it down.

Beginning with Amy’s boarding Godspeed, a spaceship set to land on a planet 300 years into the future, the story was an enticing and very original one. A brilliant mixture of sci-fi, dystopian, romance, and mystery, I was blown away by Beth Revis’s emotion, suspense, and terrifying plot twists. Trust me, once you start reading the book, there’s no way you’ll ever be able to stop wondering about this crazy spaceship Godspeed, its murderer, and what secrets hide within its conveniently forgotten history.

I think one of the driving factors of the book, alongside its heart-stopping aforementioned plot, is its characters. Amy and Elder (the soon-to-be ruler and love interest) tell the story in alternating point of view, leaving me screaming in several instances, “NO! Go back to Amy/Elder! What’s going on?!” Their perspectives are consistent and believable, and they are definitely dynamic as we watch them unravel Godspeed’s secrets and learn a lot about themselves and each other along the way. Then there are the other residents of the ship, mysterious and fascinating, adding depth to Amy, Elder, and Elder’s world.

And Elder’s world! There’s so much to say about it—there is the Eldest, a tyrannical leader who divides the society up into three distinguished classes; there are the strange animals and the bizarre majority of the population; also notable is the technology, which Beth did an excellent job making believable and utterly sci-fi.

All in all, it was an exceptional and unforgettable read that I would recommend to anyone and everyone. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I’m sure you will too.

Official Rating:

Five Un-Birthday Cakes!

              Allie