Review: Across the Universe by Beth Revis

Across the Universe by Beth Revis

Book #1

Young Adult

Published January 11th 2011 by Razorbill

Synopsis:

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.

This book was published on January 11th, and since then I've waited anxiously for reading it. So I was super excited when I finally got it, six month later : )  The story looked so good; a girl, Amy, who is frozen and she is going to wake up, supposedly, in three hundred years in the future… but she wakes up 50 years earlier in a space ship… And now a creepy idea that maybe someone inside the space ship wants her dead… I mean, that sounded awesome! Completely different to another YA book! 

So, when I started reading it, I wasn't surprise that the story starts before she is frozen, and we have the opportunity to meet her, and to see how is the process, and how she feels about everything that is going on, because, c'mon, is not easy to be "frozen". And I really enjoyed the part when she is already frozen and she is kind of dreaming and at the same time she is aware of what is happening… I really liked that part.

And that is when we meet Elder… the ship, Eldest, the Doctor… But after a while the story started to slow down… The idea of the space ship and the Elder-Eldest thing were awesome… but the development of the story was too slow, I was on page 320 and the book only has 390 I think, and nothing had happened… Amy was all the time running from the Hospital to where her parents were (still frozen, BTW) and at the same time, Elder was occupied with his problems with Eldest, and Hurley was all the time with the stars.

I was so disappointed!… and the only thing  that kept me motivated to continue reading was a simply question… Which is the truth behind all those lies? Who is the killer? And do you know? That was too predictable… When I finished reading I couldn't believe what I just finished reading. The ending was too forced… too weak… There was no mystery at all. I didn't find any romance… Wait a minute… Where was the romance? because I didn't see it!  And the story just ended abruptly like there were no more pages to write on. 

I wanted to like this novel, and in some aspect I did, but the tiny things I liked about it are less that the ones I didn't. Of course, there will be another book in this series (It's a trilogy) an if I have the opportunity I will read it. I think this story has opportunities to be developed into something better. The only thing I really like about Across the Universe, is that opened my eyes to a new genre I hadn't read before… Science Fiction. 

A Good Time-Killer