Beth Revis

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO SURVIVE ABOARD A SPACESHIP FUELED BY LIES?

Amy is a cryogenically frozen passenger aboard the spaceship Godspeed. She has left her boyfriend, friends--and planet--behind to join her parents as a member of Project Ark Ship. Amy and her parents believe they will wake on a new planet, Centauri-Earth, three hundred years in the future. But fifty years before Godspeed's scheduled landing, cryo chamber 42 is mysteriously unplugged, and Amy is violently woken from her frozen slumber.

Someone tried to murder her.

Now, Amy is caught inside an enclosed world where nothing makes sense. Godspeed's 2,312 passengers have forfeited all control to Eldest, a tyrannical and frightening leader. And Elder, Eldest's rebellious teenage heir, is both fascinated with Amy and eager to discover whether he has what it takes to lead.

Amy desperately wants to trust Elder. But should she put her faith in a boy who has never seen life outside the ship's cold metal walls? All Amy knows is that she and Elder must race to unlock Godspeed's hidden secrets before whoever woke her tries to kill again.

Across the Universe

Monicap

Sarah Sammis

Alecx Motus

This was such a surprising read for me. I usually stay away from the Sci-Fi stuff but the "secrets and lies" part always reels me in. I couldn't put the book down! It was twist after twist and I just needed to know what happened! The end didn't let me down!

Lacy W

Holy cow! This was such a cool book! Not to mention the cover is absolutely gorgeous! I am pretty new to the whole science fiction scene and am usually wary of it. But this really has opened my eyes to what a cool genre this is and the potential it has for me to find my next favorite book. 

The book takes place on a ship called the Godspeed. Amy, her parents and 100 others are frozen and will travel on this ship for about 300 years until they reach a new planet. The Earth that they knew is in pretty bad shape so scientist had found a new Earth. They have sent 100 of their most essential humans to make sure this new Earth will be better than the old Earth.

While Amy and everybody else is frozen, there are whole generations of people caring for the ship and living in it, thriving even. But everything is not as it seems, as Amy finds out when she is woken up. It's up to her and Elder, the teenager being trained to run the entire ship, to find out all the secrets aboard the Godspeed. 

To be honest, I wasn't totally into the story for a while. Elder's narrative was kind of dull. It was basically him not learning anything from Eldest and then getting yelled at when he didn't know anything. It was frustrating to see him so docile and complacent when you can clearly see that Eldest is a bad bad guy. I mean the guy said that Hitler was a good leader! Like what the heck?! I will admit that what Elder did learn was completely and utterly insane. (view spoiler)[ The racism and how Eldest wanted a ship full of the same race because it works. My mind was literally blown to pieces! There were just so many other things too, like the drugging of people so they didn't freak out and revolt. Don't even get me started on the Season. I actually had to stop reading and shake my head. Eldest was really something. The entire ship, really, was just something else.  (hide spoiler)]

Amy's was incredibly dull until she woke up. Her sleep thoughts were really boring and I breezed by them so I didn't have to spend too much time on them. But I suppose how many thoughts are you going to have being frozen for centuries? Once she woke up, she took to yelling at people and freaking out constantly. I do understand that being frozen for a century or two and being woken up to a new place is quite frightening but she didn't do herself any favors by challenging the status quo. I would have waited until I had found enough evidence that things are seriously messed up and then do something about it. 

But I could totally forgive the characters because the plot was crazy interesting. Around the 70% mark, things just got out of control but in a good way. The entire ship was essentially built around lies and to find out a good portion of those lies all at once, it was a lot to handle but in a good way. Because to be honest, the plot was kind of slow up until then. Hence the four stars. The ending made me want to read the next book. 

Overall, it was a good start to what I'm sure will be an awesome series. If you can handle the characters, it will be worth it in the end.

Jeff James

Full disclosure: I received a review copy of this book as part of the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.

Across the Universe is a mash-up of scifi, mystery, and young-adult fiction, with a bit of romance thrown in for good measure. In a nutshell, it tells the story of a colony seed-ship on a journey towards a distant planet and the teenage girl who wakes up early – 50 years before the trip is over – only to find herself stuck in a strange, dystopian society where someone may be trying to kill her. All of this sounds fascinating, but the end result is a mystery that is telegraphed far too early and scifi that doesn’t quite stand up to scrutiny.

When the main character, Amy, wakes up from cryogenic sleep – nearly dying in the process – she quickly meets the leader of the society, Eldest, and his protege, Elder, who will assume the reigns of leadership when Eldest retires. The book alternates viewpoints between Amy and Elder, which is a nice way of giving us both the insider and the outsider perspectives.

The more Amy finds out about the ship society, the stranger it seems. Racial and class distinctions are gone because all of the people are genetically uniform. Rather than reproducing normally, the people on the ship go into heat during “the time”, which Amy is told is coming soon. Everyone in the working class is strangely emotionless and distant, as though they are running purely on autopilot. The only people who seem to show any spark of intelligence or normality are all considered “crazy” and given a regimen of pills to keep them under control.

The mystery revolves around discovering who is unfreezing and (sometimes) killing the colonists. The author spends a lot of time early on talking about how nobody locks doors on the ship because privacy is so respected, but too much of the mystery relies on important doors remaining unlocked. This is a bit hard to swallow when Eldest spends most of the book jealously guarding his secrets, even from Elder. I didn’t have much trouble figuring out the culprit fairly early on. This is only disappointing because the book spends so much time focused on the murder mystery when it seems like the true mystery should be the nature of the ship itself. However, I will give the author credit for throwing in a few good surprises near the end of the book.

One other thing that didn’t seem entirely credible was the initial configuration of the ship, with frozen Earth colonists below and living lower-class workers doing the menial upkeep of the ship for centuries while the colonists sleep. It just seemed like a recipe for class warfare, as if the ship’s initial designers set out to cause as much social friction as possible. How do you reintegrate those two groups into a working colony, with one sleeping while the other toils away? I also questioned how sustainable the ship could be with the bulk of its passengers living and reproducing and using up resources. It seems like it would be far more practical to keep everyone frozen.

Although I wasn’t entirely satisfied with this book, I did check the author’s website to see if it was planned as the first in a series, and it is. The ending doesn’t exactly scream for a sequel, but it doesn’t necessarily tie everything up in a neat little bow, either. Amy finds out some hard truths after she wakes up on the ship, and those hard truths don’t just go away at the end of the book. I’d definitely be interested in reading future books set in this world, although I do hope that the author shifts her focus towards exploring some of the intricacies of the society she’s established, rather than spending so much time on a so-so murder mystery.

Emelie

Nicole Dykeman

Pretty good book. Nothing super amazing about it, but I enjoyed it for the most part.

Maggie Gordon

** spoiler alert **
           Full review available at: http://mgbookreviews.wordpress.com/20...
 
The Good

The first thing that struck me about this book was its introductory chapter, and I am not the only person who has commented positively on the incredibly suspenseful writing. My heart thumped heavily in my chest as I read about the intense and painful procedure behind cryogenic freezing. I really appreciated this scene as it shows how technology can have consequences. While I do enjoy sci-fi where technology is so advanced that many of the downsides have been eliminated, it’s also important (and very interesting) to see stories where science is in development, and where use of new technology comes with a price. Cryogenic freezing is a sacrifice on many levels in Across the Universe, and this emotional first chapter was a great way to show the high stakes of the choice that Amy has to make.

Another aspect of Across the Universe that pleased me was how subdued the romance was. While the book was advertised as a love story, the romantic relationship between Amy and Elder does not overtake the main plot. There is nothing wrong with romances themselves, but it can be aggravating to have a very interesting sci-fi plot take a backseat to a simple teenage love story that could have easily been told in a normal high school setting. Furthermore, while Elder and Amy fell in love quite quickly, I actually believed in the reasoning behind their infatuation for one another. Elder had never been around women his age before as he was born in-between generations, and Amy appreciates that Elder is the only man in her life who has never lied to her or tried to force her into doing something for him. While this might not seem like a lot to base a relationship on, it makes sense in the context of two teenagers stuck on a spaceship with no one else to trust.

Finally, I am quite fond of Amy as a character. She is a teenage protagonist who acts her age without being a miserable representation of what the author thinks that teenagers act like. She is brave in the face of her terrifying fate, but she also cries for her parents. While she may act out sometimes, she also accepts responsibility. For example, she understands that even though her early awakening means that she may never see her parents again, she knows that they are needed when the ship actually lands, and therefore she cannot wake them up simply to be with her. I appreciated her balanced traits, and enjoyed reading about her reactions to her life on Godspeed.

The Bad

The first chapter of this book was so intense that I had very high hopes for the rest of the novel. However, Across the Universe did not fully live up to the excitement of its first few pages. Instead, the book moves very slowly, but does not take advantage of this sedate pace to flesh out the characters or the world very well. This is made worse by the fact that the writing is sometimes unclear and confusing. There were times when I struggled to visualise what the author was describing, and it took a while for me to immerse myself in this new world.

The other major issue that I had with Across the Universe was that even though many horrific things were taking place on Godspeed, the chilling nature of these actions was not adequately conveyed. This may be because the book was told largely through the eyes of the two main characters, and Elder, at least, didn’t see many of these actions as totally wrong. On the other hand, other books have managed to make me shiver despite whatever the main character thinks. For example, when Amy learns about the dictatorship running the ship, the use of Phydus, and the euthanasia of the older generations, her reactions are often subdued. She is angry, but does little to actually effectively challenge these regimes. She is in a precarious position on the ship, and many do not believe the things that she says because of the fact that the captain called her a pathological liar, but she rarely speaks about these issues to anyone other than Elder and the doctor. When she does talk about the ethical problems that she’s uncovered, there is a lack of in-depth conversations with shipboard people about them. There was room in this novel for some very interesting discussions of the ethics of survival that unfortunately did not occur. Consequently, readers lack of the context to really be able to understand the positions of the shipboard people, and this ensures that the conflicts that Across the Universe brings up are less conflictual and thought-provoking than they could be.

The Ugly

CONTENT NOTE: Discussion of sexual assault and reproductive coercion

While I do enjoy authors who understand that dystopias are books that should push boundaries in terms of human morality, I say this with the assumption that such limit breaking is used for a purpose. Dystopias are meant to tell us something about human society as it is right now, as an author is speculating about a future affected by certain current beliefs or behaviours. Good writers will take these concepts to their logical extremes in order to show how disorder could arise from contemporary failings. I appreciated Across the Universe for exploring the horrors that a dystopia has to offer, but the inclusion of the “season” and the rape of Amy were uncomfortable, disturbing, and largely unnecessary.

After the rebellion on Godspeed and the implementation of the Elder/Eldest totalitarian system, the powers that be decided that the average citizen needed to be drugged into compliance with a opiate called Phydus. Part of this system involved reproductive control. On the drug, the “Feeders” (the working class of the ship) were given large doses of birth control, and the mood-altering aspects of Phydus diminished everyone’s sex drive. Once every generation, however, the drinking water would be flooded with hormones, causing all of the adults of the appropriate age to mate without discrimination. The women would be given additional drugs in order to ensure that they became pregnant, and the developing fetuses would be genetically modified to combat the problems of incestuous breeding and introduce important genetic variations in the population. Individuals on Godspeed grew up thinking that it was perfectly natural to mate in this manner since it was similar to the way that animals copulate (hence why this period of time is called the season).

On its own, the season is an exceptionally creepy and horrific concept. It’s an ugly commentary on what sorts of terrible things human beings will do to one another to survive. And this sort of terrible concept is not unwelcome in a dystopia. Being that it was a system that was dismantled by the end of the book, and it was continually described as something so horrific and unfair that it needed to be destroyed, the book was quite responsible in how it dealt with the idea. It was the result of a desperate and morally destroyed people, and an experiment that had horrific consequences. I was uncomfortable with the season, but that was the point. I was actually impressed that the author was able to deal with the concept. That is until the author made the choice to have Amy be raped.

Amy is unfrozen only days before the season takes place aboard Godspeed, and she was never really told what the event entailed. She leaves the safety of the hospital one day and is assaulted violently by a group of three men. Screaming for help, she is told by the other women under the influence of the drug that it will only hurt a bit and she should just enjoy herself. The men pin her to the ground and tear off her clothing. While she is not penetrated, she is most certainly raped. She is rescued when a friend from the hospital sees the assault occurring, and Amy escapes back to her room, left in overwhelming fear and terror.

Part of the horror of this scene is supposed to arise from the fact that the drugged Feeders simply cannot control themselves during the season. However, one of the men involved in the gang rape, Luthor, was from the mental ward of the hospital where all the individuals on the ship who are given drugs to counteract the mind-control drug live. These individuals are unaffected by the season, so Luthor made the active choice to rape Amy and to induce two other men to join him.

The only reason that this scene seems to have occurred is to make Amy feel unsafe on Godspeed, and to set Luthor up as a villain. However, Amy already felt quite unsafe on the ship, and Luthor was portrayed as a person with questionable morals in several other ways. The rape scene was merely an addition to a plot that already had quite the substantial amount of foundation to it, so there was no real purpose to having a sexual assault added. Rape is a difficult, sensitive, and easy to misuse topic, and it was an unnecessary addition to this book. (Further, having read the rest of the series, I now know that the horror of the scene really does not pay off. While it is mentioned several times in later books, it doesn’t truly affect the plot or much of Amy’s character development).

Final Thoughts

Across the Universe has many problems, but the book had enough redeeming features for me to pick up the second novel in the series. It’s a book that takes chances, though not all of them pay off, and some are downright icky and unnecessary. I enjoyed the low-key romance and the author’s ability to tap into some of the more horrific aspects of dystopic writing. After reading the rest of the series, this is a definite recommend with a few reservations.

Mary Rose Luksha

2.5 stars really since I finished it and it wasn't too bad, and I'll probably read the next one.

Pros: Believable science grounded in a some cool world-building. 
Mostly well-placed intrigue. 
There is actually a lot of philosophical stuff happening in this book regarding free will and technology and I think the author handled it pretty well.

Cons: That being said, I think she didn't want the main characters to side against the free will argument, and I would have loved for her to explore that more dangerous aspect. Though to be fair perhaps she does in later books. 
Some of the description and dialogue was rubbish. I'm not fond of authors who make up swear words. If you want your characters to say the damn curse, write it; if you're worried you'll offend people or won't get published...maybe writing isn't for you.
I could call all the "plot twists" 50-100 pages before the characters learned them.

But my BIGGEST problem with this book, and the reason I did not give it 3 stars is the HUGE plot twist at the end (I will say no more) was completely artless. There just had to be a better way to do that. Thank God it came at the very end of the book otherwise I might have thrown the thing across the room in frustration.

Cassidy C

OH MY LANTA!! I love this book sooo much! It was definitely a page turner, the book kept me guessing and I wasn't really able to predict what was going to happen next. The romance in the book was amazing! I love romance and this definitely kept up good standards. I can't wait to read the 2nd book!

Sheila

Lila Harrison

Toni Turner

Damn. Okay a few things to state. 
This was the first audio book I've ever experienced. And in the beginning I was pretty sure I hated it I more and more the story progressed I realized it was like a movie..but long af. Haha I just got to picture everything in my head. It bothers me a bit how the voice actors sway how I picture the characters in the book. It's confusing at first haha. Overall most of the things I didn't like too much were just personal preference. I totally called pretty much everything that happened in this novel. It was one of those times where the reader knows more than the characters. It was super frustrating! But when they finally figured it all out I was so pumped. This novel was actually really intense and there were a lot of moments where I felt like crying out of frustration for the characters. I wonder if I would have felt the same way reading the book on my own instead of it being read to me haha. Last thing I wanna say is definitely the most important. I love Harley so frexing much. Throw him right on up there with favorite male characters.

Ana Molnar

First of all, I just want to say that I am absolutely and irrevocably in love with the cover of this book. It's so gorgeous. It's perfect, I swear. The colors and Amy and Elder and .. WOW ! My favourite book cover in the whole universe.  HA-HA !!
It(the book cover) was one of the reasons why I decided to read this book. A beautiful image like that wouldn't be used as a cover for some random book, so I figured it must be a good one. The second reason why I decided to read it was the fact that I love dystopian /science-fiction novels even though I haven't read that many. I read the synopsis and I thought the book had a really interesting premise so I decided to give it a shot, see if it's as good as people say.

I have to be honest, I kind of hated the book at first. The first chapter totally caught my attention and I was so eager to see what happens next. So I kept reading, but after reading a few more pages I started to reconsider. There was something about the writing that bugged me. I don't know. The pacing was really slow and some of the characters were pissing me off. It felt like there was something off about them. Some of their lines (especially Amy's) sounded so stupid and immature .. and unoriginal sometimes.. but I kept reading the book and I found her more likeable and, when I reached the end of the book, I realized that I actually love her character. About Elder, hmm .. he's a good character and he's hot !! Oh, but Harley. I really liked his character. (view spoiler)[ Oh, how I cried when he died. (hide spoiler)] Come to think of it, I liked most of the characters, except for Eldest.. Okay, fine. Maybe I did like him. (view spoiler)[ Oh, and that thing with Orion being the Elder was obvious (hide spoiler)], no offence, Beth Revis, but I still loved it. 

The book's not perfect, though. It's not even close to perfection. The characters of a book should be more complex. A few of the characters in this book .. and how the author wrote them, I don't know.. but they barely show any feelings, especially in the first half of the book. But, like I said, the book gets way better in the second half .. and so do the characters. I hope to see some improvement in the next book.

I am not sorry I read this book. I'm actually glad. I am definitely going to read the sequel. I can't wait.

RATING : 3

Katie Holem

Kendra Jones

I really loved this book, except for the ending, which was fine but could have been better

Olivera Mitić

Edit: I decided to change the rating to 4 stars. The book really didn't stick with me. Too bad

This was amazing! Wow!

Maike Bruls

I really liked this book, but I did have to get used to the switching between point of view.

Barbara Rosas

I LOVE THIS BOOK!!!! ❤❤❤❤ one of my favorites books!!!!!

Tijana Kovac

This is one of the first sci-fi novels I've read and I've gotta say it was pretty good. I liked the cryogenic freezing as it reminded me of the tv show Silver Sun which I really liked. There was a lot of mystery in this book which is always good.I was a bit disapointed at the end of the book it didn't seem like an end it was just not what I was expecting. Amy sort of forgave Elder for unfreezing her but I don't know how much she forgave him and how sincere it was. I found the 'Always' line they said to each other a sort of rip off of Harry Potter. I'm sorry but you can't go copying J.K Rowling like that, 'Always' is reserved for Severus Snape. 

I got really confused when people aboard Godspeed kept saying 'chutz' and 'frex'. From my understanding 'frex' is their swear word and 'chutz' is the equivalent of stupid or something like that. I don't know if this is futuristic jargon that is yet to be explained or if it's from the author's imagination or culture/country.

I don't understand how Elder is shocked at discovering about the hidden floor where the frozens are because seriously he already knew about them if he went down there and re-animated Amy. So either he was lying to himself/the reader or he's really stupid.

I'm usually really bad at picking the culprit but I found it pretty easy in this book. It was pretty obvious that it was Orion. They kept on going about his scar and I knew pretty much straight away that he didn't have a wi-com and was probably behind it. I did however find it surprising that Elder was the one who re-animated Amy,I did not see that coming.

Overall, this was a pretty good book and it looks like I'm going to be on the hunt to find the second book.

Hannah

5 frexing stars.

This is one of my all time favorite books now. ALL TIME FAVORITE. I loved it so much, I can't even describe it. There are so many secrets and lies, chaos and betrayal. There were many parts where I cried my eyes out and had to take a while to absorb WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED. I really recommend it if you love sci-if and, well, I just recommend it in general.

b.andherbooks

I thought this was an interesting story about a future society stuck on a space ship and the politics of control. A pretty dark story for teens, but could have been taken further. I would be interested to see some additional books to complete this tale.

Chelsea Breher

I enjoyed this novel, it was an interesting concept and overall was good. It's not a favourite but I am looking forward to finishing the series.

Nikki Fowler 

Across the Universe sounded promising at the time until you read it. The main character is annoying and frustrating and I didn't really like any of the others characters either. I found the Amy was always complaining about what her parents made her do but in the end it was her choice. I also found the world confusing where the characters would do one thing but another would do the opposite. I don't think I liked the authors writing style. It could have been so much better...

Across the Universe

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