Amy, their only child, has to make an enormous decision: either join her parents in cryogenic sleep for 300 years, leaving everyone and everything that she’s ever known far behind her, or say farewell to her family and live the rest of her days on Earth without them.

Amy’s parents, a skilled biogeneticist and a high-ranking military officer, have both been selected and approved as vital crew for the Godspeed‘s mission. The world has united, sort of, under a multi-national corporation (of greed) that is funding humanity’s excursion to a distant habitable planet, to exploit and harvest that planet’s presumably bountiful natural resources. First, the story:Īmy is a teenage girl on a future iteration of Earth. As I’m a sucker for dystopias, YA, and science fiction, I had high hopes for Across the Universe…which unfortunately collapsed into a big melted puddle of cryo-liquid. This book had a whole lotta hype working its way: a pretty & kissy cover (scary questions of racial modification aside) 1, it cashes in on the dystopian YA trend (which, in the words of Mugatu, is “SO hot right now”), and everyone from Kirkus to the YA blogosphere has been falling head over heels for Ms. Such is the case of my reading experience with Across the Universe.

Why did I read this book: The cover was pretty, and I am a sucker for a good science fiction novel (although I gotta say that I have yet to read a contemporary YA scifi novel that has actually been good).ĭo you ever notice that when a book blurb tries to sell you something as grandiose as “ Across the Universe is Titanic meets Brave New World,” you end up almost inevitably disappointed? How did I get this book: ARC from the publisher Stand alone or series: Book 1 of a planned series But should she? All she knows is that she must race to unlock Godspeed’s hidden secrets before whoever woke her tries to kill again.Īcross the Universe is Titanic meets Brave New World. Godspeed’s passengers have forfeited all control to Eldest, a tyrannical and frightening leader, and Elder, his rebellious and brilliant teenage heir.Īmy desperately wants to trust Elder. Now, Amy is caught inside an enclosed world where nothing makes sense.

But fifty years before Godspeed’s scheduled landing, Amy’s cryo chamber is unplugged, and she is nearly killed. She expects to wake up on a new planet, 300 years in the future. Genre: Science Fiction/Fantasy, Young Adult, DystopianĪ Story of Love, Murder, and Madness Aboard an Enormous Spaceship Bound for the FutureĪmy is a cryogenically frozen passenger aboard the vast spaceship Godspeed.

Across the universe book