Illuminae (Illuminae Files, #1)

by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

[inlibrisveritas]

Illuminae is a unique take on the sci-fi space genre, that went right past interesting into addicting and consuming!

I was a bit hesitant about Illuminae. I knew I wanted to read it, but I wasn’t sure what to expect when everyone spoke of the different layout of the story but it turned out to be one of the most of visually appealing books outside of children’s picture books that I’ve read in recent years. Our story is told through a series of ‘documents’ like instant messenger chats, emails, computer logs, and debriefs. So instead of getting an up close and personal view of the action we see everything unfold through a secondary play by play. While it does put some distance between the reader and the character, I really loved the format. Some of the pages were far more powerful because of the images and the way the words we displayed, and it’s really amazing how much of the story you can glean from a simple pictograph.

Our main characters have three very different roles within the fleet that is fleeing a warship. Kady, is a bit of a technological genius who doesn’t like being kept in the dark and begins her hacking into the databases of the fleet to find out the truth. I really love her sarcasm and attitude, any character who sasses their way through a crisis is a kindred spirit. Then there is Ezra, Kady’s former boyfriend, who is the opposite of her but wholly devoted despite their falling out. He takes on the roles of a pilot, on a different ship in the fleet. I really love the email interactions between these two, because even though they are limited to contact purely in text form they really have a nice dynamic Then there is AIDAN, the AI on the ship Alexander…and probably my favorite character and the only one you really get to be inside the ‘mind’ of. Ever since HAL came to the screen, we’ve had an obsession with AI taking things into their own ‘hands’ and AIDAN is no exception to that. I loved getting to see it’s self awareness grow and just what happens to an AI that discovers it’s capable of independent thought.

Illuminae is a thrill ride from beginning to end, with a ton of different twists that I wasn’t expecting and and ending that has me ready for the second in the series. I have so many questions!