Review- Across the Universe- Beth Revis

Across the Universe- Beth Revis

Publisher: Razorbill
Age Group: Young Adult
Pages: 416 pages

Genre: Science Fiction

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From Goodreads

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.

Usually I wait until the end of my review to share why I think a book will appeal to the guy readers out there, but I’m going to make an exception with Across the Universe.  Why? Well basically because I think that there is one thing that is so awesome about this book that will help get it into the hands of guys and I just can`t wait to share it. And what`s even cooler is that it has nothing to do with the story!! So what is it? The dust jacket. Yep that’s right. The dust jacket. Why? Because it is awesome!! Okay but why is it awesome you might be asking? Well it’s reversible, that’s why! 

 Across the Universe has not one, but two covers. The first cover has kind of a cosmic look to it. Its main colours are pink and purple and the dominant images are reverse profiles of Amy and Elder.  Now don’t get me wrong, the cover is beautiful. It’s just really, really feminine. It`s a sad but true fact that most guys would walk by and notice it on the shelf at their local bookstore and say to themselves, “I can’t read that, it’s a `girls` book.” Let’s be honest, there aren’t a lot of teenage boys that would enjoy walking down the halls at school carrying around a pink and purple book. The problem with that is that they would be missing out on a really awesome book! So how did the publisher solve this problem? Simple, they designed a second cover. All you have to do is turn the dust jacket inside out and BAM it’s a whole new book! (well obviously it’s the same book, but you get my drift). The second cover isn’t hyper masculine or anything like that, but it’s perfect and it totally appeals to the guy readers out there. As you can see by the picture, it’s basically a blueprint of the Godspeed. Not only does it look great, but it also gives the reader an awesome visual of the different levels of the ship that Revis describes throughout the book. In my opinion adding the reversible cover to the book was nothing short of a stroke of genius.  Kudos to whoever came up with the idea.

Okay, okay enough about the dust jacket. Let’s talk about the book already. So aside from the fact I absolutely loved the cover, I loved the book just as much. When I first heard about Across the Universe I was drawn in by the plot summary right away and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it. And Beth Revis definitely didn’t disappoint me. I would describe this book as ``sci-fi lite`. And by that I mean it will not only appeal to regular science fiction fans but to readers who generally don`t read books about space, space ships, and little green men, as well.  It really does have something for everyone. 

The story is told in a duel narrative. First there`s Amy, the 17 year old girl born on earth who has been frozen in ice for centuries locked away in Godspeeds underbelly. And then there is Elder, the teenage leader-in-training of Godspeed. Personally I liked both of these characters. Although I will admit that at one point I felt as if Elder was a little too one-dimensional and was controlled by let`s just say his, primal urges, a little too much. However, the more I read the more I realized there was a lot more to him than that. I also realized heck, who am I to judge. If I had spent my entire life aboard a ship with nobody my age around of either sex and all of a sudden a beautiful girl is thrust into the picture, who`s to say what kind of urges I would have had. The more I thought about it, I realized that Revis had actually hit the nail right on the head with that one.  I guess us guy`s aren`t as `deep` as I`d like to think sometimes. 

I`ve been a sci-fi fan for a long time, but I can honestly say I had never really thought of all complex issues that would result from multiple generations of people living and evolving on board a spaceship while on a flight that is going to take hundreds of years.  Across the Universe really does a great job with tackling these issues and discussing them in a way that is both interesting and entertaining for the reader to follow. 

The people of Godspeed and the ship itself really are a wonderful creation, and I give Beth Revis all the credit in the world for bringing them to life and sharing them with us. I don`t know if she has any more adventures onboard the Godspeed planned for the future, but I would definitely welcome them. 

Full marks for this one from the GUYde. Give it a read, even if you don`t normally read sci-fi, you might just find that ``sci-fi lite`` appeals to you.