A Million Suns

Prematurely awakened from her frozen sleep in Across the Universe, Amy is having trouble adjusting to claustrophobic life aboard the generation ship Godspeed. Now that their sixteen-year-old leader (and Amy's love interest) Elder has discontinued the drug that kept the populace subdued, the workers are getting rebellious. This second volume in an intended trilogy keeps readers enthralled with solid construction and a fast pace.

Prematurely awakened from her frozen sleep in Across the Universe (rev. 3/11), Sol-Earth-born Amy is having trouble adjusting to claustrophobic life aboard the generation ship Godspeed. Now that their sixteen-year-old leader (and Amy's love-interest) Elder has discontinued the drug that kept the populace subdued, the workers are getting rebellious -- a situation not helped by Elder's discovery that the ship is not merely limping along behind schedule, it has actually stopped. Meanwhile, Elder's homicidal predecessor, Orion (now frozen for his crimes), left behind a trail of encoded clues for Amy, hinting at a secret to be discovered and a choice Amy will have to make. But someone is tampering with the clues, and Amy and Elder are both caught up in the growing threat of violence on board the ship. Although the "puzzle" contained in Revis's narrative is less organic than the mystery in the previous book, it keeps readers enthralled with solid construction and a fast pace. The moral quandaries brought to the fore by shipboard life -- how to balance social order against individual rights, safety against freedom -- seem a natural extension of the concerns raised in the first book, and the ending, a resolution of one tension and the introduction of a whole new set of others, is perfect for the middle book in an intended trilogy. anita l. burkam