ARC Review: Across the Universe

Across the Universe by Beth Revis
Release Date: January 11, 2011
Published By: Razorbill
Hardcover: 398 Pages
Young Adult
Source: Traded
|Official Website|
Overall:  

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.
Synopsis via Goodreads

My Thoughts:


This review will be a little unlike my others, quite vague, with adequate reason.  When my friend asked me what I thought about Across the Universe I had to pause a moment then I answered, "Wow, I can actually like Sci-Fi.  I need more.  I just can't even explain it."  Insane, right?  I am the girl who could never be considered a Treky, or Star Wars fanatic.  I've tried to give the sci-fi-ish genre a chance before, several times, even in small doses and it just wasn't for me.  But I guess with Beth Revis' ability to bend the rules and pour her own creative soul into Across the Universe I was left feeling speechless when it came to describing my feelings for the book and realizing anything is possible.  Literally.


Across the Universe introduced us to a world unlike our own.  In this world people can be cryrogenically frozen and there are spaceships with missions larger then what even those creating them understand.  Our two main characters Amy and Elder are the reason we are taken on Godspeed's journey. Harley, another while less vital character, helps create emotion and adds added depth.  These three together paired with the other characters Amy crosses path with take us on a journey that is much more then just through outer space...


"READ THE ASTONISHING STORY OF LOVE AND MURDER AND MADNESS ABOARD AN ENORMOUS SPACE SHIP BOUND FOR THE FUTURE"


While Across the Universe seemed slightly vague at times  I still felt the emotion and direction at full impact, I saw the levels as we traveled them and understood what was going on.  There are so many differences between Amy's world and the world she is sentenced to live in that she can't even begin to comprehend how she will survive.  However, it is the similarities that show her that while she may have left so much behind and to the future that so much more awaits her.  Just because she was mysteriously unplugged in a time she wasn't prepared for, and just because their world was completely dictated by the tyrant Eldest, didn't mean there weren't emotions to be felt and to be built on and a world to make better.  A world that might just benefit from having a slight disturbance.


Beth Revis single handedly brought to life a whole genre with Across the Universe for those, like me, who may have never shown interest in it before.  Across the Universe was the perfect mixture of Sci-Fi, Mystery and Romance paired with beautiful writing and style.  This is one definitely goes into my re-read pile.


Cover:
Characters:
Storyline:
Overall: 

On the cover: I won't lie, it is the cover that caught my attention followed by the synopsis.  Without either of these I would have effortlessly  overlooked this tale. The longer I stare at the cover the more appropriate it seems.  One of the main reasons I will refrain from including in my review because it may lead to a potential spoiled between Amy and Elder but beyond that it really is a true, and gorgeous, representation of the book's contents.