"A Million Suns" (Across the Universe #2) by Beth Revis

386 pages

In Across the Universe, Amy woke up from a cryogenic sleep on the spaceship Godspeed...only she was fifty years early. She and her parents were supposed to be unfrozen when they reached the new planet they'd spent hundreds of years traveling toward. However, someone thawed her early, intending to let her drown in her container. Luckily for her, she's found and rescued by Elder, the teen who has been raised to be the next leader of the three thousand or so residents who work to keep the little world on Godspeed going. Amy and Elder finally solve the mystery of the mysterious person who unthawed her and uncover many other secrets along the way, but their troubles are far from over. In A Million Suns, Elder is finally in charge. He's taken everyone off Phyus, the drug that kept them complacent and obedient to whatever their leader tells them. He wants to let everyone think for themselves, but he soon realizes that free will isn't all it's cracked up to be. Some people stop working and others rebel outright. Meanwhile, the ship is having mechanical problems, and then Elder and Amy discover the biggest secret yet--and it's something that will affect the rest of their lives and the fate of everyone on board Godspeed.

In some ways I was disappointed with this sequel, but I still enjoyed it overall. I didn't like the scavenger-hunt thing Amy had to go through to find out the big secret, as it just didn't make sense. Why wouldn't Orion have just told Amy outright what was going on? Okay, maybe he was worried about the info falling into the wrong hands. But why not leave her a note where only she could find it? After all, if she could solve the clues, someone else could too, and he was taking a big risk in gambling that she'd figure everything out. That aside, I did get into the book and have trouble putting it down. There's lots of action and multiple problems that Elder has to deal with, which sets the pace as the chaos builds and builds and finally erupts. There's a huge twist that totally shocked me, as well as a cliffhanger at the end that has me anxious for the next book, Shades of Earth, to come out next year. This is a great series for reluctant sci-fi readers. It's got some fun outer-space aspects, but it's not very technical and the focus is on the story rather than the setting.