NESISM Blog

Across the Universe by Beth Revis

A book review

Technology advances at the speed of light. The things thought to be impossible 100 years ago, exist today. Who could’ve thought 100 years ago that we could speak to someone who is miles away from us? Even today some technologies like time travel and travel to other planets seems a bit ludicrous! However, who is to say we can’t have something like that in the future?

Across the universe is a book which deals with the topic of advance technology in space travel. It is a beautifully woven story of a teenage girl (Amy) and her parents, who along with other people of Earth are bound on a space mission to a planet which is light years away.  Cryogenics is the technology used at the heart of the book where the people are frozen before they enter the spaceship.  The starting of book interestingly describes the complex process of cryogenics as Amy and her parents are frozen.

However, Amy is violently awoken and regenerated in the journey. Bewildered, frightened, lost, Amy finds herself all alone with the fact that she is 50 years away from landing.

The spaceship on which Amy had been travelling on is home to generations of people who have spent their entire lives on it. Gradually Amy discovers how the people have been living on the spaceship and their lives under the ‘Eldest system’.  There is a leader of the spaceship called the Eldest and the next in line who is Elder. This system resembles the monarchy system where there is the next in line to the throne.

Aboard the spaceship, all the people regard Amy as a freak because of her characteristics; this wrenches Amy as she is already dealing with the fact that when she sees her parents, she will be older than them.

Elder befriends Amy and as anticipated, a romance blossoms between the two. This is carefully woven into the rest of the story. In my opinion, even though there is a love story in this book, it is kept to an extent where this book can still be called Sci-Fi thriller.

The most exciting part for me is the thriller part; it is revealed that there is actually a murderer on the ship who is killing the frozen people and Amy got regenerated as an accident. From this revelation, the story picks up an immense speed and becomes more of remarkable read.

Off they go; Elder and Amy shoot off to solve the clues and the mystery gets a lot deeper and thrilling.

The book was an awesome read and I loved it. It revolved mainly about the technology and how it advances enabling us to conquer things we couldn’t have thought of achieving.  I would definitely recommend it to lovers of Sci-Fi, technology and thriller!

 By : Shachi Mokashi - IG1