Amy is brave--very brave. She experiences the same cryogenic freezing process which she describes as almost like drowning and believes that in exactly 301 years in the future, she will colonize a new planet with her parents and the others who have agreed to travel aboard the first manned interstellar ship called Godspeed.
When Amy is removed from her slot in the frozen chamber and mysteriously starts to thaw fifty years before planned, no one on the ship seems to know that she is thawing. She wonders if she will suffocate in the blue goo before someone can rescue her and release her from the tomb-like container in which she has been frozen.
What she finds aboard the Godspeed is about 2000 people, strangely all similar in appearance and with no descriptive ethnicity – running the ship, growing its food, and living a highly structured regulated existence. A man named Eldest controls everyone.
As Amy begins to understand the class structure of the ship, she realizes that a 16-year-old boy named Elder is being groomed to govern after Eldest dies. Amy is devastated to learn that her parents cannot be unfrozen at this time. She will age and perhaps die before her parents start their new lives.
Other frozen people are also suddenly being removed from their frozen slumber only to suffocate before anyone realizes that they are in trouble. The plot revolves around Amy and Elder’s trying to find out who is murdering these poor souls in this way.
Told in alternating chapters by Amy and Elder, the clever Amy has many more questions about the society formed on board the ship than Elder who has been raised in this repressive environment.
Fans will want to see what happens to Godspeed in the sequel entitled A Million Suns.
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