Across the Universe - Beth Revis

Across the Universe – Beth Revis

Pages: 398 (ARC)
Publisher: Razorbill (Penguin)
Release Date: 3rd March 2011

From Goodreads: 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.

Across the Universe is a mind-blowing sci-fi tale of epic proportions, and I loved it to bits.

One of the first things of many about Across the Universe that made me smile was that it’s written in dual narrative; my favourite form. I loved seeing life on Godspeed from two characters in such opposing situations; the ultimate outsider and the ultimate insider. The snippets of frozen Amy and Elder before Amy were fascinating in comparison to later in the novel, so much so that I almost want to re-read it to get the full effect!

The first chapter, as most people have already seen, completely draws you in by throwing you head-first into Amy’s world. So many mysteries and questions were set up that it would have been impossible not to carry on reading. And while the world she begins the novel in doesn’t seem that different to ours, but the one she wakes up in most certainly is. It’s a miniature replication of earth with a city, a hospital, gardens and homes, but there is only one race, one language with a strange dialect and no religions. There is also a subtle scheme of slang running through the novel by those who live on Godspeed which really adds reality to Across the Universe that contends with the ridiculously sophisticated developments in technology and genetics that our scientists could only dream of.

But with this, there are also some serious downsides. There is the crushing power of Elder and the attempted murders on the frozen people, the utterly disturbing and unnatural Season and the empty Feeders. As well as that, all of the things we take for granted on Earth – the sky, rain, clouds, fresh air, throw-away materials and, ultimately, freedom – are not available for those who live, work and die on Godspeed.

All in all, I loved Across the Universe. I think it could be one of my favourites that I’ve read so far this year and I’m VERY excited for the sequel.

For my 2011 Debut Author Challenge

A huge thank you to Puffin for sending me a copy to review.

Sophie