Illuminae: Book Review

Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Series: Book one in The Illuminae Files

Genre: YA Science Fiction

Publisher: Knopf Books

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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.

(source)

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One word to describe this novel filled with a dossier of hacked documents: woah. This was published like two years ago and within those two years up until now, there are a lot of controversies. There is like an approximate rate of 50% readers that “hate this” but another 50% for “absolute love this.” My definitive one word of “woah” is the good kind and take a guess… I am part of the readers who “absolute love this.”

Although I think I can understand the reasons for hating the novel and the one thing I assume is the way the story was written. At first, when I heard that the story is not written through narratives like the way normal novels are written, I thought that the book would be ridiculous. But I was wrong. Irony at present, the best part of the novel was the one thing that I thought would ridicule the book into attracting “boo’s” and 2 stars. It is the way both authors placed together a perfectly developed story through a dossier of hacked information, which includes e-mails, schematics, military files, IM’s, medical reports, interviews, and narratives about surveillance footage. I also appreciate the parts that allow the book to enlighten as to not make the story too heavy with the scientific terms and processes.

Grade:

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It must have been difficult for the authors to compose a great storyline due to the circumstances of using a dossier of information as the main foundation to narrate the story. So I think they deserve a huge star for doing such an excellent job in delivering a great story. I just love how at the start, it was all chill then the plot escalates into one tiny problem to a medium problem to a larger problem. The story was perfectly sequenced and developed.

Controversy coming up… my favorite character is AIDAN. I loved reading his P.O.V and though he is an object, he really has the intellect and wisdom of an ordinary human. Despite the main issue of needing to destroy the Lincoln, I discovered that AIDAN also has his (apparently AIDAN is genderless but I picture it as a male) own issue to resolve, which is:

“Am I Merciful?”

He questions humanity about why they placed his essence in a ship. He wished to be a normal human being. Though he is accused of being one of the enemies in the story, I felt sympathetic when later learned the purpose of not letting the other citizens go to Heimdall. By the end of the book, I got always kept thinking of AIDAN as a possible human not in physical looks but in essence. So I guess this is why I consider AIDAN as my favorite character in Illuminae.