Authors: Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff
Series: The Illuminae Files #1
Genre: YA Sci-fi
Page Length: 599
Published: October 20, 2015 by Knopf Books for Young Readers
Source: Library
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Summary
This morning, Kady thought breaking up with Ezra was the hardest thing she’d have to do.
This afternoon, her planet was invaded.
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.
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 swore she’d never speak to again.
Told through a fascinating dossier of hacked documents—including emails, schematics, military files, IMs, medical reports, interviews, and more—Illuminae is the first book in a heart-stopping, high-octane trilogy about lives interrupted, the price of truth, and the courage of everyday heroes.
Overall Rating: 4.5/5
Format: 4/5
This book is kind of a big deal for me because it made me realize that I can enjoy books written in this style of instant messaging transcripts, surveillance footage, diary entries, and a slew of other formats. I was massively skeptical going into this because I just don’t enjoy them usually. Would I have enjoyed this just as much if it was written in traditional format? Probably, but it would be an entirely different book. Entirely different. We could’ve seen other characters’ POVs in a traditional format too, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as riveting as seeing some of these communications in their “original” format. It simply wouldn’t have worked as well in regular old paragraphs. There are even bits with swirling text, text in the shape of an object or arranged all catawampus and confused, or even blank pages with just one word on them. These formatting choices added to each moment to evoke a sense of shock or horror or even the silence and vastness of space itself.
That being said, it made it a little confusing at the beginning. I had no idea where I really was in the story except it was after some catastrophe on some planet with people who weren’t supposed to be there, and someone attacked them and someone saved them, and I kept mixing up the ships and which company was good or bad. I made a Post-It note to keep it straight at first. Maybe this is a struggle with most books in this format, but I can imagine the author really needs to make sure they are implanting important expositional details into the beginning in a way that the reader can absorb and comprehend. There was a lot going on in the beginning of this book and a lot of backtracking at first to try and keep everything straight, but it wasn’t exactly a bad thing for me. I think we were supposed to feel this sort of overwhelming sense of “There is a crapload of stuff going on right now omg” because the characters themselves are feeling that way too. It worked for me, but if you find yourself a little lost at first, just make a little cheat sheet and keep reading. It’ll pay off.
Story: 5/5
The story is amazing and full of all the twisty-turny bits I need to keep me invested. The action doesn’t stop. Again, you might feel some confusion at first, unless you’re more used to these dossier-style books and can comprehend faster than I can. An event went over my head a little towards the beginning and I had to remind myself who was where and what was what, and then I appropriately said “Holy crap” and buckled in for the ride.
Kady Grant and Ezra Mason are great characters. Kady is headstrong and not one to sit on the sidelines and wait for things to happen, but she is hiding all of her fear and uncertainty. I appreciated seeing these vulnerable sides come out through some of the journal entries and even in some of the chat transcripts, because most of the time she is pretty badass. Ezra doesn’t have the computer skills that Kady has, but he still doesn’t take a backseat in the story even though Kady mostly pulls the strings with driving the plot. Their chat transcripts were probably my favorite sections because it’s clear he’s more focused on getting her back and thinking that all of the stupid things they fought over were a complete waste of time. Anyone in a relationship can relate to this. Most of us aren’t trying to make up with each other in space under threat of possible annihilation, however.
I felt invested in supplemental characters, as well, though especially Ezra’s friend Jimmy McNulty (who has to be a clear reference to the character of the same name in The Wire, because c’mon now). We don’t really meet him in any physical capacity until later, much like Kady’s Byron, but I still found them believable even though there’s virtually no backstory and everything you know about them is what is happening in the present. It’s enough to know a good amount about Jimmy, though Byron was still a little mysterious to me and just seemed like another guy in the ship somewhere hacking into the systems with Kady. Their chat transcripts were usually just all business.
**Spoilery story stuff**
The fact that there were both a horrifying medical outbreak and an AI gone-wrong in this story made it really stand out for me. It didn’t feel like overkill. They could’ve just stopped at the virus, because it’s already plenty riveting, and leave out the AI altogether. With the Phobos virus, you get intense thriller elements. The afflicted are just so uncannily unhinged, devolving into this paranoid madness and your skin just crawls. The fact that the virus was basically created by a company as an agent of warfare is sure to come up again, and this is just another plot point that speaks to our own world. How long before someone starts attacking others with diseases, viruses? Scary stuff.
The AI, AIDAN, surprised me too. I was fully expecting the AI to be the main antagonist, since most stories I’ve read with evil AIs don’t really attempt to get me to sympathize with them in the end, though I know I’ve read some. The story gets you to really think about why the AI acted the way it did. And for brief, horrifying moments, some of its actions make sense in the context of its own thought processes. The reader understands, in a way, and even though it isn’t even human, I sympathized with it. It never becomes this sudden, supreme agent for good, however, which wouldn’t be believable. It does get to the point that it admires Kady and her skills, however, and even her drive to protect and save Ezra. I loved that dynamic more than I can explain. The second half of the book looks into AIDAN’s mind a lot, and it is fascinating and horrifying, but Kady’s conversations with it are similarly hilarious and even light-hearted at times. It will be very, very interesting to see what happens with the AI in the next installment, since it seems to have attached itself to Kady.
Writing: 5/5
Most if it is dialogue, because of the format, so it is obviously important to get a sense of the environment from that alone. This is mostly well-done, since there are different vehicles for description, such as the surveillance footage transcripts and the interviews in the beginning. Kady and Ezra are written well and I felt their words were fitting in most cases. Every transcript from the surveillance footage was either written by the same person or just embellished to be amusing, because they obviously weren’t done by a professional who was just supposed to describe what was occurring. These were necessary to show the reader when Ezra or Kady were doing something away from their communications, however, and I guess doing so in a more light-hearted way was more interesting than just a boring write-up.
Otherwise the writing was sharp and concise without seeming forced at all, which is certainly a concern where details are mostly just communicated via dialogue and that dialogue has to seem natural. AIDAN’s dialogue, however, is beautiful and lyrical and descriptive at times. It’s a nice contrast from the basic e-mails or surveillance descriptions and chat transcripts. AIDAN is matter-of-fact but also has a sense of wonder and reflection on its own existence. Honestly AIDAN is probably my favorite character.
Judging by the Cover: 2/5
Nothing to really write home about for me. I like the colors but I have this extreme aversion to anything with “The _____ Files”–unless it’s the X-Files, of course–because I have never been a fan of books told via texts, transcripts, news articles, etc (as described above). Honestly I probably wouldn’t have even picked it up if it wasn’t co-authored by Jay Kristoff, who I trust with stories (no dig on Amie Kaufman, I’ve just never experienced anything of hers), and if I wasn’t often reminded by the internet about how amazing it is. Behold one of the rare moments I trusted the internet.
Kady as Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century:
The Apt Metaphor 