I recently finished Across the Universe and A Million Suns by Beth Revis and was a little sad. You know that feeling you get when you finish a really good book and then you miss the characters? Yep. That’s what Beth Revis did to me.
Here’s the Across the Universe description from Goodreads: 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 hidden 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.
I knew right off the bat these were going to be great books because Revis’ description of Amy being frozen and then the painstaking years of her unconsciousness was brilliant. It made me ache for her. I couldn’t put the book down until Amy became un-frozen because… well, I just couldn’t leave her like that! That is how completely this book sucked me into its world.
The whole of both the books are like that, though. I had to keep turning page after page. I’d get to the end of a chapter, ready to put it down and then she’d end it with something like this: “I turn toward the ceiling, toward the exposed universe. Toward death.” I dare you to not turn the page and start on the next chapter after a line like that!
I not only loved the premise of the series but the characters are also fascinating and not predictable. Amy is not a weakling girl out of time who needs to be taken care of by the strong leader. Elder is not a cocky, overbearing leader who thinks he knows everything. And most of all, Beth Revis is not afraid to go “there.” To dark, uncomfortable places. But places that make perfect sense for the plot to go – not for gratuitous reasons.
The best part was the major twist in the second book. ‘Nough said. No spoilers here.
So, brilliant? Yes. Here’s where the dastardly part comes in: book three (Shades of Earth) is not due out until January 2013. I am reminded of my unwritten rule to never start a series until all the books are already out so I don’t have to wait for anything because I have the patience of a five-year-old. Unfortunately, I keep breaking that rule so I’ll just have to anxiously anticipate the wait for this book along with all the other Revis fans!
