Series: Across the Universe #1
Genres: YA, Sci-fi, Romance
Published: January 11th 2011 by Razorbill
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.
I was hoping there would be something - anything to improve the concept of the story which was pretty good in itself. Perhaps the ship would crash and the people would land on another planet, maybe there would be a rescue mission in space, even a battle with a mysterious alien spaceship would have been preferable. But what do we get? Ah, that's the golden question. We get nothing.
There is little to no action in the book, and that eventually eliminated the whole spaceship idea for me. When we find out that there is more to these people getting unplugged like Amy, and when she goes off with Elder to solve the mystery I simply couldn't wait to sink my teeth into the action. Delicious, lovely, sizzling action! What do we get? We get nothing.
I'm not a fan of the romance included in the book and it was a bit annoying since it clashed a bit with the main plot. Elder almost immediately gets infatuated with Amy and lusts after her and goes a little over the edge with the lust. It was pretty much one sided because Amy wasn't giving off any such impression and would still reminisce over her boyfriend - from before she got frozen.
Also one thing that made me do a double take and cringe:
"Amy pulls away and looks into my face. Her pale skin is blotchy red, her eyes are veined and shadowed, and a shiny line of snot trickles from her nose to the top of her lip. She wipes her face with her arm, smearing tears and mucus.
DUDE, no. EW.She has never looked more beautiful to me."
I managed to shake off the whole thing as not instalove and thought, why not? It could get better as it progresses. Elder will stop with the infatuation, act like a leader! What do we get? We get nothing.
The story was extremely predictable. It becomes obvious who the murderer is and I just rolled my eyes all the way. I had such high expectations that I thought maybe the author is tricking the audience, perhaps there will be an ultra-mega plot twist.
What do we get? We get nothing.
With all the things mentioned above put aside, it might seem like there is nothing much to like about the book. That might be true, but I really enjoyed the rest of it. The writing was pretty good except for some cases, the setting was interesting and intriguing and there was also one interesting side-character.
In conclusion: My main quibble is the lack of action. The book felt like a horrifyingly lengthy introduction. Hopefully, the next book will feature more interesting things and since I've heard good things about it, hope is up.
