Speculating on SpecFic

Fantastic Literature: From epic fantasy to fairytales to myth-making

Across the Universe

Across the Universe - Beth Revis Taking the book at face value I find that I liked the examination of human nature within the story of Across the Universe. The book explores how human society would change and adapt to life on a generation ship, with startling results. I think Amy is justifiably scared when she wakes up on the ship and her loneliness is only compounded by the differences between herself and the people on the ship. I loved Harley - he was an awesome character and kept me guessing throughout the whole book. Here, however, my tenuous appreciation of the book ends.First of all I have an intense issue with the characters. Amy is a more rounded character than Elder but this is due to Elder being such a poorly envision man. He doesn't know who he wants to be, rails at Eldest, the ship's leader, unnecessarily and yet meekly follows him when he should question orders. Elder falls in love with Amy at first sight, for no other reason than she is different from the mono-ethnic people of Godspeed. He doesn't even try to understand her and ignores her when she insists that human society has been warped on the ship from that it was intended to be. Amy, on the other hand, understandably misses her parents and is scared for their well-being, but all she can do is whine about her Daddy (forgetting her mother all together) and her ex boyfriend.I won't get started on the science used in this book. I will direct you here, to a blog post on the heinous science errors in this book. I will say that the book is not at all grounded in science but rather popular misconceptions of space travel entertained by a largely clueless populous. This book is certainly not for me. Sadly, in my opinion Across the Universe doesn't raise any interesting issues (the alteration of Earth's history is intriguing, but poorly handled and largely ignored), had only one character I enjoyed reading about (who will not be making an appearance in future works) and while the twists in the plot are enjoyable, the characters do not react to them in a satisfactory manner (the ending was simply ridiculous). Read more of my reviews here.