Review originally posted at Simply Adrift.
I finished Gemina, and I'm not entirely sure how to gather all of my thoughts.
I loved Illuminae. I loved the style of writing, I thought the idea of reading a story through case reports was interesting, I was a little afraid of not being able to connect to the characters because of this style but I found out it was fine and I was indeed able to connect with the characters.
When I picked up Gemina I had high expectations. Were they met? In a short answer? Mostly. I say mostly because there were a few things that I picked up on that I was 'meh' about.
Overall, I really enjoyed this story. The style was once again very interesting, I still really enjoyed reading the story through a dossier of emails, IMs, transcripts, classified files and schematics. This time however I felt like I got more of the story and could connect with the characters more. Not entirely sure what was different, perhaps because there were more video summary reports from Analysts rather than IM's which I found hard to really get into in Illuminae. Although there were some 'files' where the page was black and the writing was dark grey which was really confusing, it was hard to read so I was trying to figure out why they thought that was a good idea?
At the beginning of the book we get a peak into Hanna's personal diary, Marie Lu was the illustrator and the pages were so cool! The illustrations were awesome! However, we stopped seeing these less than half way through the book which was sad because they were so good! I wanted more of Hanna's diary throughout the whole book.
Gemina is based on a space station in the middle of nowhere. The station itself orbits a black hole which is used as a gateway for space travel. I thought that was a really interesting idea. The story centres around two characters, Hanna and Nik. Hanna happens to be the daughter of the new commander of the space station, she's super hot but she's also a bad-ass and knows how to fight etc. While Nik is there with his family who happen to be the mob and deal drugs for a living. Nik's family are also not registered as living on the station but no one can stop them because of who they are. Nik's more of a charmer and a flirt rather than a real bad boy that ha done some real bad stuff.
Gemina actually felt a lot like Illuminae. The formula of the story was very similar. It's set on a space station in the middle of nowhere, there's an impending doom that no one can help with in time, a parasite bug on the station is killing or dis-arming everyone, a bad-ass heroine, an unlikely relationship, no adults around to save the day. While it was really similar I still enjoyed Gemina a lot, but I was also constantly drawing these parallels between this and Illuminae. Gemina didn't really mix it up enough to be a completely new story, so I can see how people aren't loving this as much as the first book, there was no 'WTF' moment.
I mean there definitely were twists. (DON'T READ THIS SPOILER if you haven't read Gemina yet). The reason this book is called Gemina became apparent near the end, and I really enjoyed this idea. Albeit it ended up making part of the story a bit cliche. You know how one MC dies and then suddenly the other MC finds out that, that MC is still alive in the other universe so they're not actually dead and they both can be reunited and perhaps start a relationship once it's all over? I mean of course one of the MC's isn't dead. When does the love interest ever actually die?
So I didn't really feel that emotionally connected to this moment because I felt like there was something coming up. It felt like I was watching a movie made in the 90's. You know how some of those movies set up the drama or impending doom? They specifically show you a camera shot of something and you know that something bad will happen. But the people in the movie have no idea what they're up against.
Like in the movie Dante's Peak with Pierce Brosnan, they keep showing camera shots of a water spring that's meant to be cold, but - uh oh - it's starting to boil - unknown to the people that live around the mountain. So we as watchers know that something is about to happen with the volcano but everyone in the movie is none the wiser. This was the kind of feeling I kept getting with Gemina. Was this a bad thing? Not really, but it did pull me out of the story a bit because I kept comparing this to movies made in the 90's that I watched in Social Studies in High School.
Did I enjoy Gemina? Hell yes I did. I enjoyed the ass kicking, the parasite bug things scared me, I really loved the science behind the space station built around and orbiting a black hole, I loved the science part. Yes, the above things made me laugh or cringe, but I still enjoyed this book for what it was. The fact it wasn't something that blew me out of the water is the reason why I can't rate it higher than I have.
Overall I enjoyed Gemina a lot. I was taken along for the ride and was able to immerse myself in the world.
Have you read Gemina? Did you enjoy it? Did you have major issues with it? What were your thoughts?
Always,
Jordon
This review was originally posted on Simply Adrift