Across the Universe

Across the Universe by Beth Revis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is an interesting mix of a lot of genres: science-fiction, dystopian and also a detective story, so to speak.
I really liked it. The concept is original - at least to me - and even though it belongs to YA lit, it's pretty disturbing at times.

The story is told in alternating points of view. We have Amy, a girl from Earth who signed up to be cryogenically frozen to be sent, together with her parents, on a ship called Godspeed, supposed to travel for 300 years to another planer to colonize it. On the other side we have Elder, a boy born on the ship who is supposed to be the next leader of the people populating the ship. Amy gets mysteriously unfrozen before time and finds herself in a weird society of descendants of people from Earth where someone is killing the "frozen" people.

The plot is pretty fascinating. Aside from the fact that i like dystopian fiction, this book was cleverly developed. The situation of the ship and of its history is gradually revealed during the book, as do Amy's and Elder's personal histories as they get more and more disturbing with each page. I hadn't actually expected the dystopian element in this book, i knew it was sci-fi, that it had romance and some murders involved. But the society created aboard Godspeed resembles a bit the one of "The Giver" by Lois Lawry but even more claustrophobically so, because there is actually nowhere to go. In fact, that was probably the most disturbing part of the book. The thought of these people being born on the ship and destined to die there without ever setting foot anywhere was pretty appalling to me.

The reason why it didn't get 5 stars is because i found pretty irritating the lack of information about what was going on on Earth at the time when the ship was launched. What were the reasons for the building? Who built it? What were the criteria for people to go? Was it an international joint venture or only American? What was happening on Earth at the time?
I am hoping that more will be revealed in the next installment. Because there is a next installment and i am super curious to see where it's going to head, considering the fact that they're so far away from landing and they can't go back. What is the possible conclusion of such a story?


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