A World of Reviews

I wasn’t really sure what to expect when I started reading this book. I’d seen a lot of mixed reviews about it and, to start with, I really wasn’t sure if I was going to enjoy the book. However, by the time I finished it I found that I did really like this book. It tells the story of Amy who is frozen for 250 years while the spaceship she is on travels to Centauri-earth. She is unexpectedly woken up early, and has to deal with life aboard this weird and mysterious ship. Across the Universe also tells the story of Elder, a boy who is destined to be the next leader of the ship but is intent on discovering it’s secrets.

The first thing I want to mention is the cover. I’ve seen a lot of people who were really confused about what the picture actually is, but I rather like it. It has some of the important stuff in the book shown here, like the stars, and is just really pretty too.

Although it started out slow, the plot improved a lot by the end of the book. I found that the beginning of this book seemed to have a lot of filler while it introduced to the ship and the world. Amy being woken up doesn’t actually happen for a long time and, although I did enjoy her chapters when she was still frozen, I would have been happier if the plot had picked up more quickly at the beginning. However, the pace of the book kept speeding up once Elder and Amy had met and by the end there were revelations and plot twists in every chapter. It was a lot of information in a very short amount of time and it’s possible it might have been too fast by the end. I did really love the book once things started happening though.

There aren’t many characters in this book, which means we learn a lot more about each of them. Our main character is Amy, who has been frozen for 250 years. I liked seeing the way she adapted to living aboard the ship, and she seemed to be a very realistic character. Her reactions were very believable and I did rather like her character by the end of the book. The story is told by alternating between Amy and Elder’s viewpoints, and I loved Amy’s parts. I thought that her chapters while she was still asleep were also very well done.

I also liked the character of Elder and the way he wanted to change the world that he was apart of. I liked the fact that he was able to see Eldest’s point of view and I thought that made him a much more rounded character with conflicting feelings. He was also quite a sweet character sometimes, and the scenes where he introduced Amy to his world were really nice,

There were some things that got on my nerves, and one of these was the word “frex”. Usually, I’m not bothered by swearing or anything like that in books because that’s pretty much how real life works. However, I got really annoyed with words like “frex” because they were used so often. I understand that Beth Revis was avoiding swearing in her books, but this is pretty much the same thing. I just got annoyed every time Elder used the word, which was a lot.

I really loved the setting and the details in this book, and the way the ship was set up. It was clearly planned well, and the details about how the technical side of the ship worked was really cool. Also, the setting itself was great and I really enjoyed reading about it.

The one thing I will say is that I don’t think a sequel is required. I understand where the story is going, with the whole thing about the engine, but I think it would’ve been really nice if this had been a standalone.

I would definitely recommend this to anyone who likes sci-fi and futuristic novels with a bit of romance and mystery thrown in. I’m not sure if I’ll read the next book in the series, but I may give it a go.

For more reviews, visit my blog.