Across the Universe [Review]

Stats:
#1 in Across the Universe series
398 Pages [Kindle]
Published 11 January 2011
ASIN: B004NNULKY


Synopsis:
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 Thoughts:
Across the Universe is told in two perspectives: 1) a 17 year old girl, Amy, who starts off being cryogenically frozen. 2) Elder, a 17 year old boy, who has lived his life aboard the ship, Godspeed, and is the only 17 year old aboard. Elder is in training to become the next leader of Godspeed (a ship headed from Earth or Sol-Earth to Centuri-Earth) to take over for the current Eldest. There was an Elder before him that should have taken over, but he is dead and so the Eldest is teaching Elder everything he needs to know to lead the over 2,000 people aboard. He is learning what causes discord in a society. The first is difference, which is why everyone aboard is the same race and no one has religion. The second is lack of leadership, which is why there is an eldest. He doesn't trust Eldest and finds out about a whole other section of the ship from person in the Recorder Hall, Orian, that includes a whole room full of cryogenically frozen people.

After Elder's discovery, Amy is awoken from her frozen state quite violently. She would have died if Elder and Doc (and Eldest, if I remember correctly) hadn't made it in time. After she adjusts (as much as she could) to the new environment, the new society, the thing left to do is find out why she was woken up 50 years early and who did it. Then a few more are unplugged and more and more of the ship and how it is running unfolds.


This was another surprisingly great book. I love how amazingly Revis built the world en route to Centuri-Earth. I cannot wait to read the next in the series and see what happens next. A lot of this is a who-dun-it that you get distracted from by the corrupt "government" and the strange way that people keep acting. It's absolutely awesome!


Previous Review:
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green [here]

[Counts toward my TBR Pile challenge: here]

Linked up at...