It's been a while since I finished Across the Universe and gave it a mostly positive review. Since then, I have changed a lot, read many more books, and my expectations and standards have become higher. As more and more time has been put between my finishing Across the Universe and starting A Million Suns, I've been wondering if I would be quite so forgiving of some of the issues I had in the first book if I were to read it again now. You see, despite the pretty sparkly covers, it is the characters and relationships that are lacking for me. In terms of sci-fi, I actually think these books are really good.

When it comes to proper science fiction - space, aliens, etc. - I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with it. I'm fascinated by the idea of life on other planets, of exploring the universe and discovering all its secrets... but most of it feels a little cold and emotionless. Forgive me, but one theory I have is that a large portion of it is written by men - as two sci-fi authors I do love are Margaret Atwood and Ursula K. Le Guin - and quite a few of them (yes, I know, not all of them) tend to write your typical boy sci-fi: scary aliens, big guns, and intergalactic battles. There's not enough exploration of ideas that could happen in humanity's future.

This is the side of Revis' series that I love. Imagine being a part of the human race a few centuries into the future, imagine that we've discovered a planet that could sustain life, and imagine that there's a plan to get there on a huge ship where certain individuals will be frozen until arrival, and others will live on the ship and reproduce for the several hundred years it would take to get there. Imagine that things don't go quite to plan and those living on the ship start to find the dark secrets locked away behind hidden doors. This is the story being told here and I love love love this idea. There's mysteries that kept me guessing, moral and ethical dilemmas that tear friendships apart, and there is hardly any romance. I know, it's hard to believe. Look at the covers, look at the taglines, the blurb describing how Amy is torn between her feelings for Elder and the chaos that's pulling everything apart - this is such bad marketing when these books are 100% sci-fi with the barest suggestion of romance between the two main characters.

And yes, the characters. They are what stops this book and the one before it from being excellent. Elder and Amy have flat, drab personalities that I can't even find words to describe - because how do you describe nothing? Okay, maybe that's a slight exaggeration. But I should be inside Elder's head feeling his frustration over what's happening to the ship, his anger, his worry... he has so much going on his life that it's impossible for him not to be experiencing some severe emotional turmoil, and yet I never got that. Same with Amy - she is battling between the desire to wake her frozen parents up and the knowledge that if she does they won't have a chance of getting to the planet and starting a new life. I should feel her sadness, but I don't. It's really bad when a novel is written in 1st person from two points of view and I feel disconnected from both of them.

If you're wondering whether you should read this series or not, you need to ask yourself what's most important - good characters or an action-packed and thought-provoking plot? If you said the latter, you'll probably love it. If you need a strong connection to the characters, you may struggle with this.