A Review of 'Across the Universe' by Beth Revis (Audio Book)

"A love out of time.  A spaceship built of secrets and murder.

Seventeen-year-old Amy joins her parents as frozen cargo aboard the vast spaceship Godspeed and expects to awaken on a new planet, three hundred years in the future.  Never could she have known that her frozen slumber would come to an end fifty years too soon and that she would be thrust into the brave new world of a spaceship that lives by its own rules.

Amy quickly realizes that her awakening was no mere computer malfunction.  Someone-- one of the few thousand inhabitants of the spaceship-- tried to kill her.  And if Amy doesn't do something soon, her parents will be next.

Now Amy must race to unlock Godspeed's secrets.  But out of her list of murder suspects, there's only one who matters: Elder, the future leader of the ship and the love she could never have seen coming."

After hearing mixed reviews and not really being drawn in by the synopsis, I finally cracked and I borrowed this audio book from my digital library (by the way, my digital library is a life-saver, as are audio books.  I'm not sure if I've mentioned that before).

I liked that there were two people playing Elder and Amy.  It felt more like a performance that way (as opposed to just a book that was being read).  I will say that I liked the voice actor for Elder better, however.  Amy's voice was dreamy and for her cryogenicly frozen state, I think that worked, but then she didn't seem to have very many other tones.  Elder was much more interesting to hear, mostly because he's so involved in the world and Amy is so unfamiliar with it.  I find it more exciting to experience what Amy could be experiencing than to be told by Amy what it's like to go through what she's going through.  Basically, as a reader, I like not knowing and having a chance to discover this world that is so unlike my own.  I like having a chance to figure out what's going on.  With Amy around, that experience is taken away from me.

This is a very plot-driven book, but unfortunately, the book moves at too slow of a pace.  The characters are discovering things at different times and experiencing things that the other isn't, but the book still felt very slow... I haven't read the other books in this trilogy, nor have I started them, but I bet you could fit at least one of those books into this one.  I feel obligated to finish the series now, so perhaps I'll begin reading and it'll pick up pace and it'll be clear why three books are necessary.

The cover, on the other hand, is beautiful.  That's what drew me in in the first place, I think. 

Overall, this book is good if you need your hand to be held throughout the book, but it's also good if you want an intriguing futuristic read.

I give 'Across the Universe':

Thanks for Reading!

--Jude