Waiting On Wednesday (8)

Hi guys! It's Waiting On Wednesday again, hosted by the ever lovely Jill from Breaking The Spine. So what are we waiting for this week??

Shades of Earth (Across the Universe # 3) by Beth Revis

Release Date: January 15th, 2013

Caution: Spoilers from the Across The Universe Series ahead!

Amy and Elder have finally left the oppressive walls of the spaceship Godspeed behind. They're ready to start life afresh--to build a home--on Centauri-Earth, the planet that Amy has traveled 25 trillion miles across the universe to experience.

But this new Earth isn't the paradise Amy had been hoping for. There are giant pterodactyl-like birds, purple flowers with mind-numbing toxins, and mysterious, unexplained ruins that hold more secrets than their stone walls first let on. The biggest secret of all? Godspeed's former passengers aren't alone on this planet. And if they're going to stay, they'll have to fight.

Amy and Elder must race to discover who--or what--else is out there if they are to have any hope of saving their struggling colony and building a future together. They will have to look inward to the very core of what makes them human on this, their most harrowing journey yet. Because if the colony collapses? Then everything they have sacrificed--friends, family, life on Earth--will have been for nothing.

FUELED BY LIES.
RULED BY CHAOS.
ALMOST HOME.

-GoodReads

Why We're Waiting

Oh. My. Goodness. When the first book came out a few years ago, I was, like, meh. This is okay. (Read my review here. I wrote it when I was, like, eleven, so bear with me.) When the second book came out this year, just reading it was a thrill. I flipped through it into the wee hours of the night, the claustrophobic Godspeed a perfect setting for a mystery. Now that the third book comes out soon, I CANNOT WAIT to figure out Amy and Eldest's next adventures through Centauri-Earth. January 15th will not come sooner!! 

So what are you waiting on this fabulous Wednesday? Leave a comment and a link!

Across the Universe (Across the Universe #1) by Beth Revis

Release Date: January 11th, 2011

Publisher: Razorbill

Age Group: Young Adult

Pages: 399

Series: Across the Universe #1

Amy is being cryogenically frozen so that 300 years later, she'll wake up on a new planet called Centauri Earth, where Sol Earth (or our Earth) has discovered evidence that might suggest a habitable world. She's labeled as unnecessary cargo, boarding the spaceship called Godspeed only because her mother is an expert in biology and her father an officer for the military. But something goes wrong, and she finds herself waking up fifty years before Godspeed is supposed to land.

While Amy was sleeping in her cryo chamber, however, people thrived outside. Generation after generation were born on the ship, serving for Godspeed until the one day it would land among the terrain of Centuari Earth. But something horrible, called the Plague, caused hundreds of these people to die, and a new system of leadership sprang up. Now, the ship is controlled by an Eldest, from which an apprentice called an Elder will take over when he dies, and so on and so forth. When Amy wakes up, she finds that everything is different-the people on this ship have rewritten history, have manipulated the very DNA of every human on Godspeed, hoping for unlimited control. And when she meets Elder, the expecting Eldest, she's not expecting a boy her own age, a boy she's finding herself attracted to...

Across the Universe was okay in every aspect. The characters were not flat but not dynamic either, and the writing had neither beautiful prose nor was too childish. The plot was very slow in some parts and was a bit predictable. Everything to be revealed probably occured in the last few pages of Across the Universe, which was too long a wait for me, and by the end, I was getting truly tired. The thing that really irritated me was that they never actually reached the planet, which I was really hoping for. After watching Avatar recently after finishing Across the Universe, I realized the two had similar set-ups, though they had totally different ways of going at it, and I imagined that their must've been tons of material really close to Across the Universe out there in plot.

The way Across the Universe ends doesn't really call for a sequel. Everything is kind of concluded and tied up, but I wouldn't be surprised if there will be one. Either way, I'd be excited to learn more about Amy and Elder after the aftermath in Across the Universe.