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A review by papalbina
Across the Universe by Beth Revis
4.0
O.M.G!!! I have to wait a year to know more about Godspeed, Amy, Elder and everything and my head's boiling with theories. I need to calm down, I'm going to drink some water :P
I enjoyed the book much more than I thought. Even if there are explanations which I found too pseudo-scientific for my taste and not convincing at all, and most of the action didn’t really kick until way past half of the book, I’m looking forward to reading the second book. I just hope this year 2011 will be enough full of good books, so that I would get distracted from the waiting. I’m not a patient person :P
And now, a couple of things that catch my attention while reading and are sometimes big spoilers:
— Amy: she’s strong and decided and no damsel-in-distress despite the despair of her situation. At the beginning I wasn’t too convinced about her because the chapters before her wake-up are loose and quite boring; they seem to me like page-filler. But then she wakes up and although everything should be quite depressing for her and any normal person would get depressed and/or crazy very quickly in the ship’s world, she overcome the craziness and her will to save her parents is stronger than everything else. I admire this part of her.
— Elder: he is a weird character with a bit of bipolar behavior. Despite being 16, sometimes he acts like he’s a child and sometimes behaves more like an adult than the adult who is supposed to teach him to become a leader. I also found his growing attraction and love feelings for Amy very touching and kind of cute. I have always felt attracted to red-haired people, so being in a monoethnic world I can very well understand why he’s so obsessed with her and her sunrise hair ;) I cannot wait to know more about their relationship aboard Godspeed.
— The background of this story is a mix of different sci-fi books, series and movies. I don’t know if that’s positive or negative. It was kind of funny (funny ha-ha, not funny weird xD) to find similarities to series and movies I like a lot, like Serenity/Firefly or Pandorum . I was impressed by the whole Eldest/Elder society Revis created for Godspeed.
— The mysteries are not mysteries at all and that was a bit disappointing.. That statement towards the end caught me by surprise, though xDD And
—
I enjoyed the book much more than I thought. Even if there are explanations which I found too pseudo-scientific for my taste and not convincing at all, and most of the action didn’t really kick until way past half of the book, I’m looking forward to reading the second book. I just hope this year 2011 will be enough full of good books, so that I would get distracted from the waiting. I’m not a patient person :P
And now, a couple of things that catch my attention while reading and are sometimes big spoilers:
— Amy: she’s strong and decided and no damsel-in-distress despite the despair of her situation. At the beginning I wasn’t too convinced about her because the chapters before her wake-up are loose and quite boring; they seem to me like page-filler. But then she wakes up and although everything should be quite depressing for her and any normal person would get depressed and/or crazy very quickly in the ship’s world, she overcome the craziness and her will to save her parents is stronger than everything else. I admire this part of her.
— Elder: he is a weird character with a bit of bipolar behavior. Despite being 16, sometimes he acts like he’s a child and sometimes behaves more like an adult than the adult who is supposed to teach him to become a leader. I also found his growing attraction and love feelings for Amy very touching and kind of cute. I have always felt attracted to red-haired people, so being in a monoethnic world I can very well understand why he’s so obsessed with her and her sunrise hair ;) I cannot wait to know more about their relationship aboard Godspeed.
— The background of this story is a mix of different sci-fi books, series and movies. I don’t know if that’s positive or negative. It was kind of funny (funny ha-ha, not funny weird xD) to find similarities to series and movies I like a lot, like Serenity/Firefly
Spoiler
(Phydus vs. The Pax)Spoiler
(123-year-journey with "cryonized" people to colonize a new Earth-like planet vs. 300-year-journey with "cryonized" colonizers in course to Centauri-Earth that it’s taken longer than expected)— The mysteries are not mysteries at all and that was a bit disappointing.
Spoiler
I knew the first time the doctor said he didn’t know Orion that he was the previous Elder. I knew that probably more than 300 years have already passed before Amy counts the generations before the Plague. I knew the connection between the victims was the militarySpoiler
“there was never ever a Plague”Spoiler
the fact that it was Elder who woke up Amy too, although I cannot believe he never flinched or felt guilty knowing what he had done to her (or we didn’t read it until the end). I thought the Plague had been a revolution, sort of a coup or mutiny leading to a small war, not a disease or anything similar. That’s why I still don’t believe what Eldest told Elder, it’s too simple. Exactly the same happens with the engine problems, or at least, I hope, because I would like to see Elder (should I call him Eldest now?) and Amy landing in Centauri-Earth. In other case, I would probably be disappointed, unless the story takes a turn to something different, surprising, more catchy :)—