Having come highly recommended from one of my best friends, Across the Universe is what sci-fi tries to be all the time. Definitely a little young for me, since at the 25% mark I guessed the ending. I was afraid that would make the conclusion lack-luster, but luckily, that last 40-50% of the novel was just...so well written and engaging even an ending I knew from the get-go was exciting! I loved to see Elder and Eldest grapple with what it meant to be a good leader, the best way to deal with a population trapped forever. The big question behind the novel (what does it mean to be a person) were thoughtfully answered in an appropriate ya sort of way. At the beginning there was an ancillary question to this (where is the self-located) that was dropped once Amy was AWOKEN, but because there are apparently more, perhaps this question will come up again.
The one thing that bothered me was

Spoiler

that elder was the one who woke up amy. it blindsided me because he seemed completely befuddled and that part of the story was skipped over. a twist ending to lead into the second book that seemed really cheap. amy literally has no choice but to live with the fact that elder took the chance for her to ever see her parent again away from her because she can't be refrozen, and as he is literally the only character in the novel who is her age, there is no chance that she'll get a different love-interest, and they'll probably reconcile and end up together. I think if this was something we knew from the get-go and it was something elder was actively trying to keep from her, or trying to figure out how to tell her, but not kept from the audience, it would have been handled better, but that's just how i would have done it. I don't have any current intentions to read the rest of the series, and this book was good enough for me to be confident that my worries are for nothing, but it just...grated on my nerves that this twist was pulled out of nowhere in the last 10 or so pages.