Hello Rad Readers!
I have just finished the first book in The Illuminae Files by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff and my mind is blown and I live with a new fear: the AI/Robot take over. If you are looking for a book to read during quarantine, this is the one to pick up for sure!
The way this book was written is positively incredible. It's like nothing else I have ever read; I will even dare to say like nothing else that has ever been written. I truly don't believe that there is any other book quite like Illuminae! It really isn't a "normal" book at all!
Allow me to explain...
This is a science fiction novel where we mainly follow our two main characters, Kady and Ezra. It starts after their planet is invaded by the Lincoln, a terrorist group, and this intergallactic/AI/biological warfare insues. The two get separated on the different evacuating crafts, and now everyone alive must fight, including them. As if risking their lives hacking classified documents and fighting on the front lines wasn't tough,
they also have a plague outbreak to worry about that has been documented to have horrifying effects. The Artificial Intelligence on the spaceship that should be protecting them may have become a little... too intelligent, becoming a threat as well.
That is the most synopsis I can really give you because that is all you have to know going into it. That is all I knew when I started it and I think that made the reading experience even more enjoyable because you are really just finding out what everything is about as it goes.
What makes this book so different is the way that the story is told. It is written in hacked documents: medical records, surveillance analysis, emails, journal entries, military files, a AI computer, and really just any way you can imagine aside from normal dialogue and narration. The illustration on the pages and the great detail the writers had gone into to make you feel like you are really reading files makes the reading experience two hundred times better and seriously pulls you-- nay, yanks you into the story. It makes it all so real and believable. The experience of reading this book alone is reason enough to pick it up!
I enjoyed this a whole lot more than I thought I would have. When you look at it you think it will just be a regular old cool science fiction book, but oh boy, it does not look as cool as it actually is! There was just so much depth in writing in this story. The characters were so well developed even though there was never a real narrator and the world was so brilliantly built and ugh! I am genuinely astonished by the way this book was written!
Okay, you are probably curious about the actual content of the story and less about its format and my obsession with writing styles, so let's get into that! The characters that we follow? LOVE THEM! I have never read a more accurate representation of actual teenagers! You either get something like The Vampire Diaries books where you think that the author never met a teenager and had never been to high school, or you get something like Turtles All The Way Down where you're like... these characters could be legitimately 30. Not the case at all with Illuminae. Genuinely the first page of the book you get such a good feel of who Ezra is. He's joking around, but not really joking, just being super sarcastic with this interrogator. So realistic of how teenagers actually are. Kady (who by the way because her name is spelled like this I kept on thinking of the Cady from Mean Girls) is this super hacker genius who is so relatable and funny, but also a really great character to get to know. She is smart and because of the way that the story is told you are always wanting to know more about them, but only in the best way. Not in the way where you feel like everything is too surface level.
The entire story from start to finish was so action packed and intense and suspenseful. I would read a line and I would be like WHAT! NO! WHAT? NOOO? And I would have to reread it, like, twelve times to make sure that my eyes weren't deceiving me because of how crazy the information I had to process was! You think you have a feel for what is going on. The entire time you are like oh, okay, I get it, space war! But then the story hits you with a curve ball and you are like what! Evil computer! Then you are like okay, I get it space war but with an evil computer in the mix as well. But then you are like WHAT! A PLAGUE! And then you are like I have no idea what could happen next and I cannot stop reading because I have to find out!! That was my reading experience in a nut shell...
One of my personal favorite parts, a little off key, was the guy that would transcript what was going on in the monitors. I felt like it was so funny and realistic! You have a bunch of kids stuck on this spaceship running from terrorists and they are all forced to work for the war efforts, and in the middle of this crazy intense story you have the MOST incompetent absolute DUDE writing down so very poorly what was going on in the monitors. Genuinely so funny, I thought this was genius and it was such a highlight in the book for me! It goes to show how funny, yet high stakes this book was. I don't read very many genuinely funny books, so this for me was a great refresher and a total win!
If you are looking for something so completely different with young relatable characters, a great story line, a will they or won't they make it kind of feel, lots of war and computer and sciencey-spacey really fun and interesting stuff, than Rad Readers, this is the book for you!
That is all I have to say for the non-spoilers, so IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THE BOOK STOP READING NOW...
Okay, tell me why I had to go on the emotional roller coaster of Ezra dying and then living and then dying and then living and then dying and then living! Don't get me wrong, it was thrilling to read these twists, but my heart just couldn't take it! In the middle of the book when AIDEN (the computer) is recounting what happened in the battle, and then Ezra's name pops up in the Death Bloom I was like... wait... what? I was shocked but then I was like-- NO WAYYYY a character so essential to the story gets killed off like thissss in the middle of the book, and it gets glossed over so easily. So, when he popped up in the IM talking with Kady in the next couple pages I was like, oh okay, we are chilling.
So, then we get to Kady who "escaped" the Hypatia and she is on the Alexander and we think she is about to rescue Ezra and the whole crew. BUT NO! AIDEN had Kady on the Alexander and started talking to her and she was like "where's Ezra" and AIDEN was like "Ezra isn't here..." I was like WHAT and then when we found out the AIDEN had hacked Ezra's IM and was pretending to be him the whole time after he died!!!!!!!!!!!! Rad readers, I cannot even express to you accurately in words --even if I had the expansive vocabulary of Shakespear himself-- what that did to me. I seriously had to put the book down and I just held my head for a moment in shock and amazement and "oh-my-gosh-ness" if you will. I had to take a three minute "oh my god what just happened" and a quick "ahhh gahhddddd I should have knownnn" session before I went back to reading because that is how good that twist got me.
THEN we are like, okay... regroup... Kady has nobody else, her mom had died a while before (and can I just say, the way that was revealed... genius) Ezra is dead and Kady now has no way out. SO HEART BREAKING! She is going to die too. :( The computer is weirdly almost obsessed with her I think? The people with the plague are about to eat her or something (which by the way, that was quite a frightening and thrilling and fantastic story line in this book and it wasn't even one of the main plot points!), she basically kamikazed herself because there is no way she survives AIDEN's explosion and there is no way she makes it to the Alexander in time, but she SURVIVES!? When I tell you that is the last thing I expected, I mean that is the LASTTTTT thing I expected. BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! (That is what I envision the authors saying as they were writing this book, because there always just seemed to be more!) Kady messages the leader of the Lincoln who... get ready for this one because it is a zinger... IS EZRA'S MOM!!!!!! WHAT!!!!!????? And Ezra's mom calls Kady out for lying. About what you may ask? ABOUT EZRA ACTUALLY BEING ALIVE! HE WAS ALIVE! KADY WAS JUST TRYING TO TRICK THE LINCOLN! Oh my god, seriously even in the last ten pages there was a story altering twist. AMAZING!
Okay, I am basically out of breath right now because of how invested I am in this book, so I think it would be best for me to just stop right there.
I loved this book, Rad Readers! Definitely added it to my "favorites" shelf! An easy 5/5 on GoodReads!
- C8 ;)