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SUMMARY:
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, 300 years in the future. Never could she have known
that her frozen slumber would come to an end 50 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. – Goodreads
REVIEW:
I'm in love with this series. Beth Revis is crazy good at world
building (this is a great inspiration for someone like me who wants to write
about fictional worlds!). She’s also an excellent storyteller. Across the
Universe is so packed with lies, conspiracies and mysteries that I just couldn’t
put it down. Seriously, I listened to the whole 10 hour long book in one
sitting.
In my opinion the book does have some small flaws though: I
found Amy to be a grating character and Elder made me face-palm several times
with his immaturity and naïveté. But I do attribute this to the fact that they
are after all 17 year olds, and besides, Revis does manage to make both Amy and
Elder as well as a ton of other prominent characters come live by giving them
depth and humanity. However, I can’t really overlook the fact that the author deceived
me: [SPOILER] she lied at the beginning of the book when she wrote that Elder
had no idea how Amy’s cryoboox opened. I see what she tried to do there, but it
was a lazy way to handle that twist since it breaks the bond of trust between
the author and the reader. Half of the time we see the world from Elders view,
so how can she justify him pretending to himself that he doesn't know who the
culprit is?
Otherwise I’m totally sold on the fact that the action takes
place on a spaceship, as well as on Revis’ vivid description of the ship’s dystopian
society. It almost feels like this installment is a study on loneliness and
isolation. All the characters in the book feel alone in one way or another, and
are forced to confront said feelings. And on top of that we have the meta
symbolism of an isolated population, on a spaceship on a lone journey through a
vast empty cosmos, cut off from all communications with Earth. There were some
apt philosophical points raised on the nature of power, freedom and, again,
aloneness that were well integrated into the story.
As for my favorite character; it’s clearly Orion, despite
his, well, weirdness or moral ambiguity. There is more to him than meets the
eye… and by the end of the book I was not convinced that he deserved his fate.
Jag är kär i den här serien. Beth Revis är sjukt duktig på
vad som kallas för ”worldbuilding” (sjukt bra inspiration för mig som vill
skriva om påhittade världar!). Hon är också bra på att berätta en spännande
historia. Boken är fullspäckad med lögner, konspirationer, och mysterier— jag
kunde bara inte lägga ner boken, lyssnade på den i 10 timmar sträck.
Jag
erkänner att jag tyckte att Amy var irriterande och att Elder var en väldigt
omogen och naiv ledare, men 17-åringar ska väl vara så. Trots detta, tycker jag
att Revis karaktärsbeskrivningar är djupa och väldigt mänskliga. En annan sak som
jag inte tyckte om var att jag kände mig lurad på grund av att [SPOILER] författaren ljög för mig i början av boken när hon skrev att Elder
inte hade någon aning om hur Amys cryobox öppnades.
Men jag är såld på
att handlingen utspelar sig i ett rymdskepp, och på Revis levande beskrivning
av skeppets dystopiska samhälle och befolkningen. Det känns nästan som att hon
gjorde en studie av ensamhet för att alla karaktärer i boken känner sig ensamma
på olika sätt; hela skeppet gör ju en ensam resa genom Cosmos utan någon kontakt
med jorden. Boken är lite filosofisk i och med att den diskuterar makt, frihet,
och som sagt ensamhet. Min favoritperson
i boken var helt klart Orion, även om han är… erm… konstig.
Bloggat om Samma Bok:
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[för svenska se längre ner i inlägget]
SUMMARY:
Godspeed was once fueled by lies. Now it is ruled by chaos. It’s been
three months. In that time, Amy has learned to hide who she is. Elder is trying
to be the leader he’s always wanted to be. But as the ship gets more and more
out of control, only one thing is certain: They have to get off the ship.—Goodreads
REVIEW:
How will Beth Revis top this in the next book? If possible,
this second installment is better than Across the Universe; the intrigues and
lies just get worse and worse, and the atmosphere unbearably claustrophobic.
Unfortunately, I foresaw the great secret in this book by the end of the first
book, so I was not surprised at all (instead I got the “Aha, I knew it” feeling
that I get when I read detective novels). [SPOILER] But the scene when the
Elder is out in space is so very touching that I almost cried.
I read this with mixed feelings: on the one hand I was
completely engrossed by the hunt for clues and the murder mystery, on the other
hand it was annoyed by the fact that the main action was about Amy running
around the ship looking for clues. Nevertheless, Revis truly delivers on other
things which end up making this book memorable: a community that is rapidly
falling apart when faces with problems of scarcity of food, mechanical problems
with the ship, and regular people being in panic as they awaken to the
realization that something has gone very wrong. Poor Elder! He certainly had
his work cut out for him!
As for the characters and relationships, I really liked the
tension between Elder and the new librarian. I sympathized a lot more with
Elder in this book as he take on a more active role in the management of the
community despite his incompetence. But, I must say that I still haven’t warmed
up to Amy… by the end of the book, she is in full on bitch mode so I hope she
improves in the next book, although somehow I doubt it. My favorite is still
Orion, Elder was stupid not to realize what an asset Orion could have been for
him. My most hated character was Vitria, for obvious reasons.
At the end I’m just left with one question: [SPOILER] why
the hell do they not wake the cryo people up BEFORE they leave for the new
planet?
OMDÖME:
Hur ska
Beth Revis toppa det här i sin nästa bok? Den här boken var bättre än Across
the Universe; intrigerna bara blir värre och värre, lögnerna fler och
stämningen outhärdligt klaustrofobisk. Tyvärr förutsåg jag den stora
hemligheten i den här boken redan i slutet av första boken, så jag var inte
alls förvånad (istället fick jag ”aha, jag visste det”-känslan som jag får när
jag läser deckare)[SPOILER]Men scenen när Elder är ute i
rymden är så himla rörande att jag nästan grät. Jag tycker om spänningen
mellan Elder och den nya bibliotekarien. Men jag måste säga att Amy inte blir
bättre… vid slutet av boken är hon värsta bitchen. Jag läste boken med blandade
känslor: dels så blev jag helt uppslukad av jakten på alla ledtrådar och
mördaren, och dels störde det mig att hela boken gick ut på att Amy sprang runt
skeppet och letade efter ledtrådar typ. Dock är Beth Revis så bra på att skriva
om det andra som gör att boken känns verklig: om ett samhälle som snabbt håller
på att falla sönder… maten räcker inte till, motorn i skeppet har problem, folk
som börjar ana att något har gått väldigt snett och börjar gripas av panik.
Stackars Elder! Jag har bara en fråga [SPOILER] varför i helvete väcker inte
Elder de frysta INNAN de åker till den nya planeten? Min favorit
är fortfarande Orion, Elder var dum att inte inse vilken tillgång Orion kunde
ha varit för honom. Hatade Vitria och var inte alls förtjust i Amy… jag hoppas
att hon förbättrar sig själv i nästa bok.
Bloggat om Samma Bok:
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