Book Review: A Million Suns by Beth Revis

A Million Suns by Beth Revis
Publisher: Razorbill
Publication date: January 2012
Pages: 386
Source: Library
For: Fun
Series: Across the Universe, Book 2

*Spoilers for the first book are quite likely*
Life on Godspeed has gone from ordered to chaos almost overnight.  Now that Elder stopped the use of Phydus, the people seem bent on doing nothing.  But when Elder finds out a big secret about the ship, he must try to fix that and keep control of his people.  Amy is trailing secrets across the ship as well and both are trying to figure out their relationship.  Can they solve the problems they are both facing before it is too late?

Things I Liked:
This book did anything but suffer from sequel-itis!  It was interesting and unique and had just the right balance of continuing story and new story to let it flow smoothly.  I loved the way the ship and its inhabitants followed what was a natural pattern - chaos and disarray and rioting from the order that existed before.  Amy and Elder are both conflicted and realistic enough that I wanted to know more about what went on in their heads.  The mystery and plot twists kept me on my toes (though, I had guessed nearly all the surprises and the mystery before they happened - yes even the big one discussed below) and it was just an all-around great read.  Plus, I always adore a book with an amount of space-love equal to my own.

Things I Didn't Like:
I was bothered by two things and these are pretty big spoilers, so don't read this part if you haven't read the book yet:
First, when the Shippers tell Elder the ship is stopped, I was a bit confused; picturing the ship at a standstill in space was hard for my brain, just seems unlikely they would go from moving to not moving, unless they hit something.  Then, it turns out they are in orbit, which actually is NOT stopped.  Could they just not tell the ship was moving or was it just based on them not actually using the engine?  Or, were they just misinformed?  This was never cleared up satisfactorily for me.  Second, one of the big reveals is that they are in orbit around Centauri-Earth, but every time they looked out the windows (which sounds like it happened quite often) they never saw it?  Ok, I can concede that, if they were in a synchronous orbit (ie always the same side of the ship facing the planet) they wouldn't see it, but they would have to see the two suns.  It's kind of hard to miss and the suns would not stay in the same place in relation to the ship!  I'm just not quite believing that, since the planet was pretty much just out of sight from the window that the suns were always just out of sight too.  Ok, so these are probably not things most readers would notice or care about, and they were just things I noticed as I tried to visualize the whole thing using my (albeit somewhat rusty) astronomy brain. *end of spoilers*  And despite these things, I enjoyed the book very much.  Sorry for the rant!

Read-alikes:
Inside Out and Outside In by Maria V. Snyder
Across the Universe by Beth Revis (obviously, read it first)

BOOK CONTENT RATINGS:
s-factor: none 
unless you count "frex"

mrg-factor: none 
kissy kissy

v-factor: ->-> 
a few disturbing scenes, but not graphic at all

Overall rating: **** 

For those who have read it, did those things that bothered me even cross your mind or am I alone? :)  For those who haven't, why not?

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