Across the Universe by Beth Revis
Summary
Amy is frozen for transport to a new colony 300 years away with her parents. While in transit, she is woken up 50 years too early far away from everyone and everything she has known. She gets to know Elder, the next leader of the ship. She also realizes that her awakening is no accident; someone tried to kill her, and that someone is killing other people who were frozen.
Commentary
This book is very much sci-fi light, and while I expected that, I am still frustrated with the lack of accuracy for the major plot point of the story (I'm not going to go into detail here because it would spoil the story, but you can click the link below to get the rant).
Click for spoiler
Engineers would have supplied backup cores for a journey 300 years long, and it's stupid to assume that they only had one set of cores. Also, because they are in space, there is no friction so the ship doesn't even need the cores to keep travelling in the same direction. They are only needed for course correction. Finally, having a ship fluctuate rapidly between speeds of .4 light speed and .9 light speed is ludicrous again because of the LAWS OF PHYSICS and because everyone in the ship would have been pulverized to nothing with that great of a fluctuation in speed because of the force of acceleration and deceleration.
We find out almost nothing about Amy because her story begins when she enters the cooling process. Basically, the only people from her past that she cared about were her parents and this one boy she was dating because that's all she ever thinks about. Granted, she's woken up in a strange environment, but I really didn't care what happened to Amy because there was nothing to get to know.
The romance between Elder and Amy (because of course there has to be a romance) was tepid, and besides the fact that Amy was exotic, there really wasn't much else fueling Elder's desires. All in all, despite the hype, this story isn't worth your time to read.
Star Rating: 2.0/5.0
For an explanation of the Star Rating go here.
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6 comments: Jump to Comment Form
So far I'm loving it, but I'm still not TOO far into the book. I'll have to let you know what I think:) And I'll get back to you with my impression of some of the things you've mentioned:)
Thanks for the spoiler information; I enjoyed the book (didn't love it) but I also didn't know what you mentioned in the spoiler. If I did know that, I probably would have been bothered by it.
@Bookworm I take a lot of issue with ignorance of the science you are writing about especially if you claim to be writing sci-fi
Agreed! I felt extremely meh about this book. My biggest problem was with the writing. There was absolutely no attempt to lift the language out of mediocrity and some of the cliches actually made me gasp.
haha, I love picking out science-y nitpicks in books! Lucky for me though, I really don't know too much about physics so I probably won't be as annoyed as you are when I get around to reading this one.
@Aylee a lot of people aren't as science savvy and don't care but the rest of the story didn't really keep my interest either.
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