Author: Beth Revis
Pages: 398
Publisher: RazorbillGenre: Young Adult / Science Fiction
First Published: January 1, 2011
First Line: “Daddy Said, "Let Mom go first.”
Buy it from: Amazon
Book Trailer:
The GIST (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.
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.
OPINION:
It took me about 70 to 80 pages to get into this book. That's because Amy and Elder (the two main characters) didn't meet until this page. This was my main problem. I thought, judging by the cover (which is of course the worse thing to do), that romance would be the main entree of this book-- instead it was like left-overs, reheated the next day, soggy and lukewarm. No where near as enjoyable as I thought they'd be.
Amy and Elder hardly spent anytime together throughout the novel, so I didn't really believe they had any type of connection or real reason to like each other. Amy spent most of her time with Harley (Elder's best friend) who had much more chemistry but, alas, I knew the author wouldn't let that happen. So the romance was a big disappointment for me.
The story was more like a murder mystrey than anything and it took me about 20 pages after the first clue to get who did it. So that excitement went caput too....
What I did find interesting about the book was the world-building. Feasible or not, I liked learning about the society that grew from a giant ship, Godspeed, speeding off into space for 300 years. I could feel the claustrophobia of the metal walls, the suffocation of it all. The author was very good at giving that feeling of imprisonment and I felt strangely nauseous thinking about being stuck on that ship as I read the book. Still gives me the willies as I think about it now.
Although the structure of the society was interesting, I just couldn't really, in my heart-of-hearts, believe it could ever happen. I tried. So I just let that disbelief go and then I started to enjoy the story. The fact that everything was so easily found out was still a little annoying but I could live with it.
As for the ending, it left me wanting to know more about what would happen on board Godspeed but what happened with Amy and Elder (who I keep wanting to call ENDER! Gah) was just so frexing puke-inducing it left me with a sour taste for the both of them.
The story was more like a murder mystrey than anything and it took me about 20 pages after the first clue to get who did it. So that excitement went caput too....
What I did find interesting about the book was the world-building. Feasible or not, I liked learning about the society that grew from a giant ship, Godspeed, speeding off into space for 300 years. I could feel the claustrophobia of the metal walls, the suffocation of it all. The author was very good at giving that feeling of imprisonment and I felt strangely nauseous thinking about being stuck on that ship as I read the book. Still gives me the willies as I think about it now.
Although the structure of the society was interesting, I just couldn't really, in my heart-of-hearts, believe it could ever happen. I tried. So I just let that disbelief go and then I started to enjoy the story. The fact that everything was so easily found out was still a little annoying but I could live with it.
As for the ending, it left me wanting to know more about what would happen on board Godspeed but what happened with Amy and Elder (who I keep wanting to call ENDER! Gah) was just so frexing puke-inducing it left me with a sour taste for the both of them.
OVERALL:
The book was hard to get into but, as it progressed, I got interested in the world and what would turn out with the society as it started to unravel. The romance was non-existent and forced so don't expect that. I'm definitely interested in seeing if the romance picks up in the second book and how everything unfolds within Godspeed---7.5
