Illuminae (Illuminae Files, #1)

by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

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The first book I read in 2019! I’m not going to lie, it took a while for me to actually get invested in this despite the fantastic way it’s been written.

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I’m always wary when a book blows up the community, most of the time, it’s for reasons I couldn’t care less about, so when I read it, I’m usually disappointed. Thankfully, this was not one of those times. It’s the first time I’ve ever read a book written in a complete epistolary format, I’ve seen some instances in other books (most recently in For a Muse of Fire by Heidi Heilig), but not like this and I’m very impressed that Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff managed to tell a story using just this format throughout an entire book. That being said, I do believe that the plot line in itself was on the weak side and unfortunately, not that unique, but again, given the format it was told in, using a somewhat simpler plot is not a bad idea.

I enjoy things like this; classified documents, diagrams, screenshots of pages online, weird entities and such, it reminds me of the old space opera anime, tv shows and movies I used to watch. Moreover, there is a certain level of suspense and excitement from my side when reading something like this, because I can’t wait to see what else I’ll be seeing from the authors’ style. Although, I think the one part I didn’t enjoy here happened when or AI, AIDAN, was in charge of the narrative. Despite the fact that I enjoyed being in its head, I didn’t like the black pages with the white writing (I can’t show anything without a spoiler so I’ll refrain), it’s just the cluster of words in those weren’t as fun to read in comparison with the emails and PM messages and such.

I mentioned that I couldn’t get into the book for a while and I believe my main issue are the characters, specifically Ezra and Kady. I really dislike romance when there are more important things to care about, like this book had so being in their head for a bit in the beginning where I had to deal with their relationship drama more than anything made reading this a chore. It got better when the direction of the book was shown to not be heavy on the romance, but instead to focus on those other way more important and infinitely more interesting things. This raised another issue, sarcasm is wonderful to read, but the way the two of them were written made their interactions with each other and others seem more juvenile than actually funny. I do understand that they’re younger kids, but that never meant you automatically have to make them obnoxious to read.

Thankfully, once we got into the meat of things and many many many many other characters came into it, the story became a more enjoyable novel to read and I managed to breeze through it despite a few hiccups related to my health in one of the days. Keeping track of every single name would be close to impossible, but there were side characters in the command chain that I really liked to read about, get to know more about and hope to see in bigger detail. The second half of the book and especially the fight back attempt is easily the most blood pumping parts of the book, and I enjoyed it immensely. I had some ehhhhh moments when there was some weird form of “affection” starting to show, which was my biggest issue in another book I read last year, that it got me really worried, but thankfully it wasn’t as cringeworthy as Honor Among Thieves’.

The twist in the end was fun to read as well, it wasn’t what I expected when people kept saying “interesting twist” but I’m definitely interested to see where we’re going with this and more importantly, how it will be integrated into the plot next time. From what I heard Gemina add more main characters and is mostly told from that perspective so we’ll see, my hopes are as follows:

- A plethora of interesting visuals again
- The same focus on romance, if not less

If I get these, I’m sure I’ll be one satisfied customer! I might also try the audiobook for next time, I hear it’s a wonderful experience :)

Final rating: 4/5