Novel: Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff | Goodreads
Release Date: October 20, 2015
Publisher: Knopf
Format: Hardcover
Source: Library
Synopsis
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 a speck at the edge of the universe. Now with enemy fire raining down on them, Kady and Ezra—who are barely even talking to each other—are forced to evacuate with a hostile warship in hot pursuit.
But their problems are just getting started. A plague has broken out and is mutating with terrifying results; the fleet’s AI may actually be their enemy; and nobody in charge will say what’s really going on. As Kady hacks into a web of data to find the truth, it’s clear the only person who can help her is the ex-boyfriend she swore she’d never speak to again.
Told through a fascinating dossier of hacked documents—including emails, maps, files, IMs, medical reports, interviews, and more—Illuminae is the first book in a heart-stopping trilogy about lives interrupted, the price of truth, and the courage of everyday heroes.
My Review
I just finished Illuminae the other day. I tend to gravitate toward fantasy novels, not so much sci-fi. There was a lot of hype around the Illuminae files, but I didn’t know that the writing style was something I would like. You discover the tale through mission reports and logs, chat conversations, and some journal entries. There are also schematics and some very intriguing pages in which the text actually mimics the actions of the charachters.
I actually feel a little torn about the writing style. I think it was so clever because it really put an emphasis on the relationships. However, as I sat down to write this, I realized I couldn’t really picture anything from the book… does that make sense? I suppose what I mean is that I can not describe the setting other than a space ship, and I’m not quite positive of what the characters look like other than Kady has pink hair. Now this may all be by the authors’ design, or maybe I’m truly losing my mind and they had very detailed descriptions that I’ve completely lost.
“But it’s not the same. It would not be the you that fought at Kerenza.”
Regardless of their design or my memory lapses, the story holds true and stood on its own feet. I quickly found myself imersed in the story, which was impressive. We begin the story with an email from a group which has compiled a dossier on an attack on a planet in the outer reaches of the galaxy. We learn about the attacks through de-briefs of Kady Grant and Ezra Mason, the two main characters of the story.
The tone in the debrief is perfection. Both Kady and Ezra are standoffish and snarky to their rescuers. Their reaction is what I would expect from most teenagers to the assinine qustions the interviewer asks. However, the thing that really drew me in, and was a true testament to the authors’ skill was the fact that the interviewer gets drawn into all of Ezra and Kady’s internal relationship drama. I actually found myself laughing out loud.
“Nothing ceases to exist. Energy does not perish, it merely changes forms. The ones you love, the ones you lose, they still exist as long as the cosmos does.”
Finally, the third main charachter was Aidan, the artificial intelligence super computer that runs the ship. The character of Aidan was shockingly multidimensional considering it is artificial intelligence. Color me impressed. Another interesting way the authors handled this machine was he was one of the only characters where you really knew what he was thinking. The servers store all of his “thoughts.” As such, they were available for the compilers of the dossier to read. It is the only omniscient presence through the story. It was quite intriguing. Additionally, it made the Aidan character particularly endearing.
By sheer virtue of the writing style, pretty much the entire book was full of action from the get go. Why compile boring montages? We don’t see much of how Kady learns to hack, and we don’t get to see much of Ezra’s training. What we see are the results of those trainings and lessons. We get to see Ezra in a fighter ship. We get to experience Kady’s hacking and how she is able to uncover information and undermine authority.
At the end of the book, you have a few more pieces to the puzzle of why the planet was attacked. We learn why exactly the Illuminae group compiled the dossier and for whom. I anticipate the plot twists in stories. The plot twist in Illuminae shocked me. The revelation of a plot twist does not spoil the twist either.
I cannot wait to dig into the next book, which focuses on the station where the survivors of the attack are headed.
