Review by Nicolette Sarmiento
Editor-in-Chief
Images of broken light which dance before me like a million eyes. Nothing’s gonna change my world.
Imagine waking up on a strange ship 300 years into the future. You’re drowning in your cryo-chamber because someone unplugged you. Someone’s tried to killed you.
Not to be confused with the Beatles’ timeless song or the movie of the same name, author Beth Revis’s “Across the Universe” is a suspenseful, well-developed, unique story about a world eons away.
That’s what happened to sixteen-year-old Amy, who was cryogenically frozen on Godspeed, a spaceship traveling from Earth to a new planet several million light years away known as Centauri Earth.
However, she’s now three centuries into the future and has no idea what’s going on. All she knows is that someone unplugged her chamber… and she wants to know why.
Elder is the next leader of Godspeed. His mentor, Eldest, is training him how to manage a ship full of people. But Eldest leaves certain things on the ship a secret, including the storage level of Godspeed.
Instead, Elder takes things into his own hands and finds out about these people himself. And when he meets Amy, Elder is immediately drawn to her, wanting to know what her world, Sol Earth, was like while all Amy wants is answers.
Their relationship soon brings discord to the ship’s current population of people. They know nothing about this strange-looking girl with the bright red hair, let alone trust her.
But when the murders continue, Amy and Elder must work together to find the killer and stop him before both of their worlds fall apart.
When I finished “Across the Universe,” I was speechless.
For one, the cover of the book is beautiful and eye-catching. The rule of not judging a book by its cover does not apply to “Across the Universe” because it was just as intriguing on the inside as it was outside.
This book was well-written and definitely different from anything I have read. I couldn’t put it down because of its unconventional plot.
Revis quickly develops her characters and plot and her simplistic writing style creates a complex situation, intertwining several different parallels. Revis’s indirect reference to our world’s gradual self-destruction is subtle, yet very glaring to her readers.
The dark, murder-mystery evolves into a bizarre love story that gives readers the extra incentive to finish. Hardly any stories introduce the concept of a life in a new universe through a series of twists and unexpected turning points.
I highly recommend this story to anyone who enjoys science fiction, fantasy, and eccentric themes. Though it may be an acquired taste, “Across the Universe” gives young adult readers a fresh, atypical scenario.
