Title: Across the Universe
Author: Beth Revis
Genre: Science Fiction
My Rating: 1/5 stars
Across the Universe has a very Disney’s “Wall-E” vibe to it: a space ship on it’s way to another world in order to start over. The trip is supposed to take about 300 years, so several generations will live and die before the space ship will arrive at it’s destination. However, there is a section of the ship dedicated to more “essential” personnel, people who will be needed on the new world and have been cryogenically frozen until the 300 year mark.
Amy’s parents are essential personnel, and they were able to pull some very important strings in order to get her on the ship and frozen along with them. Unfortunately, she seems to have been intentionally unplugged about 50 years too soon, by someone who may have wanted to hurt her. Amy wakes up to a completely different environment and world than there was on Earth.
The passengers on the spaceship are monoethnic, without political or religious beliefs; basically to eliminate any reason for dispute on board the ship. There are exactly 20 years between every generation because reproduction is regulated, and everyone either acts like robots or animals, depending on the circumstances.
Elder is being trained by Eldest to eventually be in charge of the inhabitants of the space ship, but Elder is now distracted by Amy who is so different from anyone else on board. She has tales from Earth about how things used to be, which threaten the sameness lifestyle the Eldest is trying to cultivate.
My thoughts:
I’m not going to lie: I bought this book strictly because of the cover. You may find this petty, or silly, or frivolous. Yet I have been just lusting after this cover ever since I first joined Goodreads and discovered it. I recently purchased the book just so I could bask in the beauty of that cover in person, but obviously intended to read it as well.
This book was a shipwreck.
Amy wakes up from her cryogenic sleep, understandably terrified and asking for her parents. She wakes to a new world and a new way of life, intimidating people and scary circumstances… and she’s sassing everyone. Literally anyone she comes into contact with, she’s talking crap, bad-mouthing, insulting, being an all-around unpleasant person, and it is not at all how you would expect a young girl to react in a situation like this. Some people may think this makes her strong or fearless, but I think it makes her stupid and annoying.
Elder just wants to have sex. He sees Amy and his hormones are on the fritz. He can’t possibly be attracted to her character since she has the personality of a troll. It doesn’t help that this story takes place during the time of the “season”, which is when everyone is allowed to reproduce. However, in this world, the “season” is when people are allowed to pounce on each other and have animal-like sex in public, which is creepy and weird.
So Amy gets unplugged, and it’s clear to at least two other characters that the act was intentional and it’s vocalized that the possibility of this happening again is high. “Oh no, whatever shall we do? Oh well, let’s leave.” So they leave and then some alarms go off and, “Oh no, someone else has been unplugged! How unfortunate! Why don’t we have some type of security? Oh well, time to go.” Then someone else gets unplugged. It’s freaking ridiculous, you guys, do these people have no brain cells?
Honestly, I couldn’t handle the stupidity of the book and these characters. I hated every moment of this book. I’ll keep it because it’s pretty, but I won’t be buying the rest of the series and I certainly won’t be reading it.
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