Wild Things: YA Grown-Up discussion

Use this thread to discuss the book Across the Universe by Beth Revis. It was selected as our regular April group read.

Please mark spoilers!

For those of you that have read it , or even those thinking about reading it, you can actually see a 3-d rendering of the ship "Godspeed" it's kinda cool:
http://acrosstheuniversebook.com/

(view spoiler)[

Ugh, the beginning about being cryogenically frozen was brutal. Yes, it creeped me out, but because it did, that means it was awesome. Especially the part about tubes being rammed down her throat – I could almost feel them scraping against mine. I thought that part was incredibly well done, and a startling first bit to write about. People sometimes assume that being frozen is like going to sleep, but Revis definitely took this a different direction.

The end was a rather confusing surprise at first. I think that it was actually too much of a surprise – Elder should have been feeling guilty about it the entire time, especially at the beginning when she first woke up and started freaking out. Orion was pretty easy to figure out from the beginning, though.

Overall, I thought the book had a great slow reveal about the problems the ship was encountering and dealing with in terms of the general plot. They weren’t very guessable problems, which I think is fantastic, because it’s easy to piece together little hints (like about Orion) that I didn’t get about the ship being 200 years behind schedule and the dumping stuff in the water. I thought they were just all genetically dumb, I didn’t realize they could get their smarts back. Which is why I’m excited there’s another book coming out! Dealing with a society that’s been abused by their past leader and are only now getting their free will back is actually the more difficult, though perhaps not as interesting, part. Not that I know what the book is about yet, of course. :) I really hope she doesn’t skip. That would be such a cheat.

One thing I didn’t understand was why the actually sane but thought to be insane people were being given an inhibitor. Once Eldest realized they weren’t going to be any use to him smart, why didn’t he just make them dumb again, since they weren’t contributing to the overall running of the ship in any way?

Another thing we were debating in one of my other groups was about the perspective switching from both Amy and Elder. I personally didn’t like it as I read fast and don’t usually notice chapter breaks and so often don’t realize when they’ve switched off and get confused. I think we can understand Amy’s perspective of why all of this world is strange because it’s strange to us as well, so she didn’t really seem as necessary to me. (hide spoiler)]

I'm about halfway through but it's not really engaging me..

I'm done! I thought it was good but not great. Many aspects of the story were interesting and it was intriguing to consider the direction that such a closed off society had taken, but the book didn't really engage me on an emotional level. I felt very detatched from the characters and their problems, although I'm not sure why that was. Elder really did come across as a spoiled, whiny brat type character who did very little to help Amy or make a stand, despite all his obsessing over her body, her hair, and wanting to kiss her.

I'm not really sure what's going on with me when it comes to YA lately... I don't know if it's that I'm becoming more discriminating/picky in my tastes, so that I'm not as easily impressed by books or if I've just overdosed on too much YA to the point that they all seem the same or if it's just that so many of these YA books are over-hyped and over-marketed so that when I read them they never live up to all the silly hype I've heard. I'm not sure what the reason is, but all these "next-big-thing" YA books have just been kind of "meh" to me. Across the Universe was all over the blogosphere, twitter and facebook shortly after the holidays, so I was probably just over-exposed to it and it was inevitable that it would disappoint me.

Maree, regarding one of your questions above: (view spoiler)[

Maree wrote: One thing I didn’t understand was why the actually sane but thought to be insane people were being given an inhibitor. Once Eldest realized they weren’t going to be any use to him smart, why didn’t he just make them dumb again, since they weren’t contributing to the overall running of the ship in any way?

I thought Eldest did explain the reasoning behind the inhibitors to Elder? Wasn't it said that "even monkeys get bored" and so the artists and creative people were needed to entertain the zombiesque Feeders? And a certain number of people were needed to be allowed creative and independent thought in order to do other scientific stuff like agriculture, weather control, etc. I think Elder said something along the lines of "being dumb is fine for the people who make the food, but we don't want an idiot running the ship". (hide spoiler)]

Thanks, Alicia, I think that's part of an answer. I think the entertainment part was probably supposed to be the explanation, because for the second part, (view spoiler)[I was thinking of the people who were stuck in the sick ward not helping to run the ship or doing anything scientific. But if their creativity was entertaining to the crew, then that would be why they stayed off the inhibitor, I guess. (hide spoiler)]

I've also been that way on a few of the YA books I've been reading, but I figure it comes with the territory. Of course, I'm newly back on the subject, so everything's still a bit fresh for the moment.

I just started and am almost halfway through. I too am having trouble really getting into this book. I'm not sure if it is the changing perspective of characters or that I just don't "feel" any of them so far.

I have just finished the book and agree with Alicia. It is good but not great. The slow pacing is really bothersome at times. The writing is really nice and clean -- a great style. But I'm not sure about the characters. I really did not end up "feeling" for any of them.

Its a little slow