Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Illuminae by Amie Kaufman, Jay Kristoff
Series: The Illuminae Files#1
Genre: Science Fiction
Release Date: October 20, 2015
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
Source: Bought
Add it: Goodreads
Rating:

<p style="text-align: justify">This morning, Kady thought breaking up with Ezra was the hardest thing she’d have to do.<br /><br />This afternoon, her planet was invaded.<br /><br />The year is 2575, and two rival megacorporations are at war over a planet that’s little more than an ice-covered speck at the edge of the universe. Too bad nobody thought to warn the people living on it. With enemy fire raining down on them, Kady and Ezra—who are barely even talking to each other—are forced to fight their way onto an evacuating fleet, with an enemy warship in hot pursuit.<br /><br />But their problems are just getting started. A deadly plague has broken out and is mutating, with terrifying results; the fleet's AI, which should be protecting them, may actually be their enemy; and nobody in charge will say what’s really going on. As Kady hacks into a tangled web of data to find the truth, it's clear only one person can help her bring it all to light: the ex-boyfriend she <em>swore</em> she'd never speak to again.</p>

Illuminae is probably one of the most hyped up releases of 2015, and I can’t really figure out why. Neither author’s previous works are that big, and the book itself really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Maybe I need to be enlightened. But I found the entire thing to be incredibly average and just simply “good”. There are little other ways to describe it.

I did really like the presentation of the story. It’s not written like a normal novel, and instead it’s presented as a case file made up of various documents and logs and chat archives. It was awesome and original, and while it did take a little while to get used to, I ended up really liking this way of telling the story. I’ve not read anything like that before. And the little Easter eggs with authors’ names being thrown around in there were cute. It all made a huge book go by a lot faster.I didn’t connect with either of the main characters. This probably has something to do with the fact that this wasn’t a normal novel where we’re inside the characters’ heads 100% of the time. And there were also about a million other side characters who were mentioned and I was kind of lost for most of it as to who exactly those characters were.

I made some, shall we say, questionable shipping choices. I’m not going to say who or what I was shipping, but I will say that it wasn’t Kady/Ezra, which I wasn’t invested in at all. In fact, one half of the ship isn’t even human. I could go on to tell you that a certain 50% of the ship doesn’t have a body, and is probably just as bad as that time I shipped a main female lead with a cat. At least the cat turned out to be a shapeshifter right at the very end. I don’t think I can really justify it this time. But no matter. I shall ship on.

My biggest issue with this book – meaning the one thing that actually made me feel any emotion – was how incredibly infuriating the “twist” ending turned out to be. I’m just so BITTER AND ANNOYED. For two reasons. #1 – The same thing happened at the end of These Broken Stars and I am so sick to death of it. What the fuck is their problem. #2 –

Anyway, I’ll carry on with this series because I liked it well enough, but I’m not going to be batting people out the way at the book shop to get my hands on the sequel next year. I’ll read it at some point.