Terra has never known anything but life aboard the Asherah, a city-within-a-spaceship that left Earth five hundred years ago in search of refuge. At sixteen, working a job that doesn't interest her, and living with a grieving father who only notices her when he's yelling, Terra is sure that there has to be more to life than what she's got. But when she inadvertently witnesses the captain's guard murdering an innocent man, Terra is suddenly thrust into the dark world beneath her ship's idyllic surface. As she's drawn into a secret rebellion determined to restore power to the people, Terra discovers that her choices may determine life or death for the people she cares most about. With mere months to go before landing on the long-promised planet, Terra has to make the decision of a lifetime--one that will determine the fate of her people.
Let me start by saying, what the heck does a "copper-skinned" person look like? Or an amber colored person. Isn't that the stuff that bugs are preserved in?
Ew...so someone's the color of insect preservative.
I loved the multiculturalism in this book I did. I mean, a star-ship with religion? An Earth based, with all it's history based religion? Jews on a star-ship? I'm surprised it took this long for someone to have come up with this idea and run with it. Why wouldn't there be a group of religious people who want a star-ship of their own? Why not? It could totally happen. So from the moment I read that I was like, "okay...okay...okay. Let's see what else there is."
That's a original twist that tosses most of my Across the Universe comparisons aside. But every time someone who wasn't white came into the story, I felt the description of their skin color disrupted the story. At least in this story, being in space they kind of had an excuse for not using "black" or "African-American" but the author could've came up with something.
And it did. It so did. I don't think I've read any book in space or any dystopia story that features homosexuality in it what-so-ever. Let alone as a driving point for freedom that reminded me of current and past Earth times. So I thought that was pretty original too.
Anyway, I really did enjoy this book. Although there were parts of it that reminded me of Across the Universe and Delirium (the fight for the right to love against the chain of command) it also kind of seemed original too. And I enjoyed that Tessa wanted to mess around later, even if it wasn't sex. That really made me believe that she was a teenage girl. I totally connected with her on that.
I didn't connect with her so much with the mysterious death of her mother, which her second-fiance's dad apparently orchestrated only we don't really know why. Or if we did, it seemed totally pointless unless we're meant to learn more in the books that follow.
But Tessa could've been fleshed out a bit more. Because how do you say you have a best friend but she doesn't know that you like to draw? Or why is it you claim to love art, but we only witness you doing it once and there's no other sort of interactions with any sort of art later? Stuff like that makes characters seem two-dimensional or less which is badddd in a Main Character/Protagonist.
And a lot of her character seemed kind of cliched. The dead mother and the alcoholic, physically and verbally abusive father. Although when he kills himself in the end, that really did touch me. I had seen it coming for a bit though. He'd made it obvious throughout the book that he didn't want to land on the planet without her mother. And he did everything he could to make sure Tessa wasn't alone. He tried to find her a husband...which became awkward seeing how he got her engaged to his secretly-gay apprentice. And man...the way Tessa found out he was gay was like,
When I read the scene, this was basically my reaction. My brother kept asking me what was wrong and I kept staring at him like he was crazy. Like this had come out of nowhere. Although there are parts of the book where one of Tessa's ancestors is writing to her daughter, Tessa (who is not the narrator) and she describes her love for a woman named Annie, still. I was just in SHOCK.
I get why some people say Tessa's selfish She nearly marries the guy that her so-called best friend, Rachel had asked to marry and got viciously rejected by. Like, that's a no-no. That's breaking girl-code and friend-code times a million. I wish she would've hinted or just told Rachel that the rebellion group on the ship was making her kill him. Not to mention the way she viciously outs Koen (her first fiancee, her father's apprentice) to Rachel after her and Rachel's confrontation of her stealing of the boyfriend. That was not cool at all.
But the manipulative woman behind the rebellion group in the first place...she's got...I would say balls but please, having balls does not equal bad-assery. But...if I say she has a va-jay-jay I'm just stating the obvious and that just sounds stupid. The girl has tits (lol). In her quest for power she managed to turn the lower citizens into a rebellion to get rid of her mother (the captain) and her successor? She nearly succeeds. Luckily Tessa realizes in the end but not before the girl kills her own mother in cold blood.
Anyway, my favorite part of the book is the search for Tessa's true love whom she has sexual dreams. She calls him her "bashert" which means soul mate or destiny and the book comes to a dramatic end. Not only has she witnessed a second murder and ran out on her own wedding but Tessa realizes that her soul mate is one of the aliens on the planet that her ship is supposed to colonize and is against their landing.
