Review: Shades of Earth by Beth Revis

Title: Shades of Earth
Author: Beth Revis
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Razorbill
Publish Date: January 15, 2013
Source: Library

What's the Story?:

From Goodreads.com: "Amy and Elder have finally left the oppressive walls of the spaceship Godspeed behind. They're ready to start life afresh--to build a home--on Centauri-Earth, the planet that Amy has traveled 25 trillion miles across the universe to experience.

But this new Earth isn't the paradise Amy had been hoping for. There are giant pterodactyl-like birds, purple flowers with mind-numbing toxins, and mysterious, unexplained ruins that hold more secrets than their stone walls first let on. The biggest secret of all? Godspeed's former passengers aren't alone on this planet. And if they're going to stay, they'll have to fight.

Amy and Elder must race to discover who--or what--else is out there if they are to have any hope of saving their struggling colony and building a future together. They will have to look inward to the very core of what makes them human on this, their most harrowing journey yet. Because if the colony collapses? Then everything they have sacrificed--friends, family, life on Earth--will have been for nothing."

My Two Cents:

"Shades of Earth" is the final book in the Across the Universe trilogy. I have loved this series from the beginning and I had been putting off this book for awhile just because I wasn't ready to say goodbye to the characters or the story (does anyone else do this???). Anyhow, I figured that it was time to finish the series. I must say that I was not at all disappointed with the way that this story ended.

In order to understand this book, you definitely need to read the first two books. I actually sort of wish that I re-read at least the second book before I read Shades of Earth. Revis jumps right into the action without really giving a re-cap of what happened. I was a tiny bit lost at first but slowly started remembering what had happened in the previous books.

There aren't a lot of sci-fi/ YA books that have come out recently. There is a ton of dystopian books but not many that are truly in the sci-fi genre. I really, really loved that this book is truly in the sci-fi vein. This book follows Elder and Amy as they finally land on the planet that they were supposed to be traveling to for so long. Everything is supposed to be better than all of the bad things that happened on the spaceship but Elder and Amy's new world is full of new and different dangers.

I love the characters in this book. As with the others books, the chapters are alternately narrated between Elder and Amy. I liked this because you get to see what each of these main characters are thinking. I think especially with so much going on in this book, it was really good to get a perspective from both characters.

Revis definitely knows how to keep you reading. I absolutely love the ending of this book and I wish that I could tell you about it but I do not want to give you a single detail because I don't want to give anything away! Needless to say, it was a really great ending!