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akookieforyou's review against another edition
4.0
“Patience and Silence had one beautiful daughter. And her name was Vengeance.”
Pretty good follow up to Illuminae, but I didn't love it quite as much. This book is still tons of fun, with heartbreaking moments, but I didn't like the cast of characters quite like I did in the first novel. Overall it was a really enjoyable read.
Pretty good follow up to Illuminae, but I didn't love it quite as much. This book is still tons of fun, with heartbreaking moments, but I didn't like the cast of characters quite like I did in the first novel. Overall it was a really enjoyable read.
joiel54's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
4.25
halfbloodcity's review against another edition
5.0
These books are such preciously little things. Either "physically" or in story content. I seriously cant deal with how amazing they are! And these plot twists? I mean the last 100 pages, my f-ing heart. And the last ten? I think I had a heart attack.
lmskikun's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
hopeful
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
loserlesbianlover's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
jenhurst's review against another edition
1.0
I don’t understand how a book with such an interesting format can be so boring.
aceinit's review against another edition
4.0
3.5 stars, rounded up out of love for its predecessor.
Spoilers, because I'm feeling ranty, in 3...
2....
1...
Spoilers in general in the review. Major spoilers are behind tags. You have been warned.
Oh, Gemina. I wanted to much to love you. After being utterly wowed by Illuminae, I wanted to dive in to you and then woefully lament that I had a year's wait ahed of me before the trilogy ends.
Unfortunately, Gemina repeatedly slammed quite a few of the buttons that make me realize I am a bit too adult (re: too much of an over-analytical buzzkill) to ever enjoy this genre in more than just rare gems.
Gemina is as visually stunning as its its predecessor but, unfortunately, this is where the resemblance stopped for me.
Both of this novel's young leads, Hanna and Nik, are too deeply steeped in characterization cliches to ever be likable. Hanna is the spoiled Daddy's Girl, and Daddy just happens to run the Heimdall waypoint. Hanna embraces her Queen Bee status by barging onto the bridge, flirting and sucking up to get what she wants, and being an all-around brat.
Nik is a Russian mobster, right down the tattoos that tell a story. On a space station that, for some reason, has Russian mobsters. Because, of course it does. He's also Hanna's drug dealer because, of course, the little space princess likes to get high every now and then.
Aren't you in love with them already?
I liked Kady and Ezra because they were, for the most part, regular kids who get thrust into an insane situation. They weren't heavily steeped in tropes and cliches, and were given room to grow and react to the story. They were normal, every day kids. Both Hanna and Nik start off with a deck of YA cliches stacked against them. I realize these same tropes and cliches will immediately endear Nick and Hanna to a certain subset of YA readership but, to me, the whole "daddy's girl/brat princess" and "bad boy with a heart of gold" thing were layered on too fast and too thick for me to every fully like or want to really root for either of them.
I was still interested in the story Gemina tells but, if this had been the first volume in the series, I doubt I would have moved on to the second, or been so vested in the outcome of the series.
Gemina picks up in the wake of Illuminae, with BeiTech still trying to cover up its mess. This involves sending a crack team of "auditors" (think Seal Team Six) to deal with both Heimdall and the Hypatia before any survivors of the Kerenza incursion can get their stories out to the galaxy.
The auditors consist of 24 elite military commando types who are supposedly the best at what they do--which is killing, erasing all traces of BeiTech misdeeds by any means necessary, and then blowing things up to ensure there are no chances of survivors.
So, OF COURSE, Daddys Little Princess (who is, like, totally rad at kicking butt in the space station's dojo) and Mafia Boy can take down the elite squad send to destroy them. OF COURSE these kids can outwit and outmaneuver the Deadliest of the Deadlies. I mean gosh, MurderSquad 24 was given minimal time to prepare for the op, and the kids have the home field advantage, and Hanna has totally taken martial arts classes so HOW COULD THEY NOT WIN?
Now, to be fair, they have some help in the form of a teenage superhacker who isn't Kady. And there's also quite a few creepy, hallucinogenic space parasites loose on the ship. But this book falls into one of my most hated YA tropes, which is victory of the scrappy, young underdogs due to idiotic mistakes of the Deadliest of the Deadlies (the kind that border on incompetence), which makes you wonder how they ever got their Deadliest of the Deadlies rep to begin with.
For instance: MurderSquad second-in-command Kali is consistently irrational and hot-headed due to a personal vendetta against Hanna. Now, if MurderSquad head honcho Cerberus had an ounce of common sense, he'd bench her after her first flare up, or put her somewhere where she couldn't fuck up the op REPEATEDLY. But he keeps sending her out time and time again, and, lo and behold, this consistently proves to be a bad decision. Team members act all weird and then go suddenly offline, even though their vitals are reading normal? Let's go right ahead and send MORE GUYS to investigate because surely that cannot possibly end with anyone being attacked by hallucinogenic space parasites. At all. MurderSquad is its own worst enemy. They deserve to be beaten not because they are the bad guys, but because they are idiots.
So, because they're idiots, there's never any real sense of peril when it comes to watching Nik and Hanna run for their lives. You know they're not going to die, and you know that.
There's also this whole because of course there is. I mean, you have to raise the stakes somehow, and the whole "threat of eradication by an evil corporation" thing is sooooooooo last novel.
Which makes me kind of nervous about how stakes are going to be raised in the final novel, especially given the direction everyone is headed in at the end of Gemina.
It's also worth noting that the audio version suffers a bit, despite the same stellar full-cast recording as its predecessor. Hanna's journals, which are cute and beautifully illustrated, don't make the transition over to audio, and often end up as a list of perky, bullet-points. This was also the case with a few of the key visually interesting layouts in Illuminae, and in Gemina as well, but the journals feel particularly lacking in audio format.
Spoilers, because I'm feeling ranty, in 3...
2....
1...
Spoilers in general in the review. Major spoilers are behind tags. You have been warned.
Oh, Gemina. I wanted to much to love you. After being utterly wowed by Illuminae, I wanted to dive in to you and then woefully lament that I had a year's wait ahed of me before the trilogy ends.
Unfortunately, Gemina repeatedly slammed quite a few of the buttons that make me realize I am a bit too adult (re: too much of an over-analytical buzzkill) to ever enjoy this genre in more than just rare gems.
Gemina is as visually stunning as its its predecessor but, unfortunately, this is where the resemblance stopped for me.
Both of this novel's young leads, Hanna and Nik, are too deeply steeped in characterization cliches to ever be likable. Hanna is the spoiled Daddy's Girl, and Daddy just happens to run the Heimdall waypoint. Hanna embraces her Queen Bee status by barging onto the bridge, flirting and sucking up to get what she wants, and being an all-around brat.
Nik is a Russian mobster, right down the tattoos that tell a story. On a space station that, for some reason, has Russian mobsters. Because, of course it does. He's also Hanna's drug dealer because, of course, the little space princess likes to get high every now and then.
Aren't you in love with them already?
I liked Kady and Ezra because they were, for the most part, regular kids who get thrust into an insane situation. They weren't heavily steeped in tropes and cliches, and were given room to grow and react to the story. They were normal, every day kids. Both Hanna and Nik start off with a deck of YA cliches stacked against them. I realize these same tropes and cliches will immediately endear Nick and Hanna to a certain subset of YA readership but, to me, the whole "daddy's girl/brat princess" and "bad boy with a heart of gold" thing were layered on too fast and too thick for me to every fully like or want to really root for either of them.
I was still interested in the story Gemina tells but, if this had been the first volume in the series, I doubt I would have moved on to the second, or been so vested in the outcome of the series.
Gemina picks up in the wake of Illuminae, with BeiTech still trying to cover up its mess. This involves sending a crack team of "auditors" (think Seal Team Six) to deal with both Heimdall and the Hypatia before any survivors of the Kerenza incursion can get their stories out to the galaxy.
The auditors consist of 24 elite military commando types who are supposedly the best at what they do--which is killing, erasing all traces of BeiTech misdeeds by any means necessary, and then blowing things up to ensure there are no chances of survivors.
So, OF COURSE, Daddys Little Princess (who is, like, totally rad at kicking butt in the space station's dojo) and Mafia Boy can take down the elite squad send to destroy them. OF COURSE these kids can outwit and outmaneuver the Deadliest of the Deadlies. I mean gosh, MurderSquad 24 was given minimal time to prepare for the op, and the kids have the home field advantage, and Hanna has totally taken martial arts classes so HOW COULD THEY NOT WIN?
Now, to be fair, they have some help in the form of a teenage superhacker who isn't Kady. And there's also quite a few creepy, hallucinogenic space parasites loose on the ship. But this book falls into one of my most hated YA tropes, which is victory of the scrappy, young underdogs due to idiotic mistakes of the Deadliest of the Deadlies (the kind that border on incompetence), which makes you wonder how they ever got their Deadliest of the Deadlies rep to begin with.
For instance: MurderSquad second-in-command Kali is consistently irrational and hot-headed due to a personal vendetta against Hanna. Now, if MurderSquad head honcho Cerberus had an ounce of common sense, he'd bench her after her first flare up, or put her somewhere where she couldn't fuck up the op REPEATEDLY. But he keeps sending her out time and time again, and, lo and behold, this consistently proves to be a bad decision. Team members act all weird and then go suddenly offline, even though their vitals are reading normal? Let's go right ahead and send MORE GUYS to investigate because surely that cannot possibly end with anyone being attacked by hallucinogenic space parasites. At all. MurderSquad is its own worst enemy. They deserve to be beaten not because they are the bad guys, but because they are idiots.
So, because they're idiots, there's never any real sense of peril when it comes to watching Nik and Hanna run for their lives. You know they're not going to die, and you know that
Spoiler
the authors have already pulled this stunt with Ezra in the last book, and everyone is going to be fineThere's also this whole
Spoiler
multiverse thing going on in the backgroundWhich makes me kind of nervous about how stakes are going to be raised in the final novel, especially given the direction everyone is headed in at the end of Gemina.
It's also worth noting that the audio version suffers a bit, despite the same stellar full-cast recording as its predecessor. Hanna's journals, which are cute and beautifully illustrated, don't make the transition over to audio, and often end up as a list of perky, bullet-points. This was also the case with a few of the key visually interesting layouts in Illuminae, and in Gemina as well, but the journals feel particularly lacking in audio format.
ameliecorriveau's review against another edition
4.0
Honestly, it is very YA, which I tend to really hate............... and yet I like this series. Oh don't get me wrong, there are lots of criticism that I could make, but overall, I still really enjoy reading it.
Yes the characters are teenagers, shallow and cliché. There is way too much romance for me and of course it's sprinkled with toxic behaviors. There are some really cringy retorts in the midst of danger (like really? You're gonna go with that not so funny, immature and far from badass comment while you're fighting for your life? I'd be laughing SO FUCKING HARD being their opponent).........
But the sci-fi story is really interesting and I couldn't put it down. Once the action starts, I kept gasping at new plot twists and found it really hard to stop reading. Plus, I like the format, love AIDAN and found myself laughing at the comments of the analyst.
So you know, let's call it a guilty pleasure.
Yes the characters are teenagers, shallow and cliché. There is way too much romance for me and of course it's sprinkled with toxic behaviors. There are some really cringy retorts in the midst of danger (like really? You're gonna go with that not so funny, immature and far from badass comment while you're fighting for your life? I'd be laughing SO FUCKING HARD being their opponent).........
But the sci-fi story is really interesting and I couldn't put it down. Once the action starts, I kept gasping at new plot twists and found it really hard to stop reading. Plus, I like the format, love AIDAN and found myself laughing at the comments of the analyst.
So you know, let's call it a guilty pleasure.
kaikai1618's review against another edition
10/5 stars
Gemina is by far one of my all time favorites. Though the formatting is so different, the writers incorporate so stunning details and some of the best dialogue I've ever witnessed. Gemina had everything from a book you would live but MORE. It had the perfect blend of different paces and of characters you can't help but feel for and love. I post-it my books and this book was a post it forest when I was done.
SPOILER SECTION
This book made me go crazy at the end because Ella is my favorite character and watching here die and then be alive and then think she was dead again put me on this emotional roller coaster. And with Nik on the train....oh my god. SO THAT'S WHY THERE ARE STAINS COVERING THAT DAMN NOTEBOOK. I love and dislike sometimes how realistic this is. Unlike some books where characters get lucky, practically every single time, the characters get unlucky and they get out of the situation by pure skill alone. It shows how realistically, luck can't always be the one to get you out, and there are no miracles to surviving. The fights were genius with the strategy and quick movements of Donnelly doing this and that subtlety to take her enemy down. The genius of the strategy reminds me of Six of Crows with plots and twists that I could never think of and that are so insanely clever.
I like Gemina more than Illuminae. I think thatI enjoyed the story line more and the formatting was better. I enjoyed more visuals and I think that the sarcasm and witty banter between the characters was something I just loved so much more. The formatting was even cooler with crazy amazing designed typography and the duel writing from each parallel world with flipped text. There was that one awesome part where Hanna is crawling through air vents and the text follows the visuals of the pipes. Hanna's drawings made me very happy and I think Marie Lu did I fantastic job drawing.
The Lanima were something that scared me. I imagined these slimy black parasites slithering around and sucking the life from these people. Without them many BiTech people would be alive, yet that time with Ella getting strangled by one broke my heart. I thought she died and I was crying over how such a strong girl like this could be brought to nothing by a horrible parasite. After Hanna and Nik kissed I was SO happy and it was amazing. I put my book down and pumped my fists in the air. But the next moment I was frickin crying because When that Lanima came U was so scared one of them would die.
But that ending? Damn. I thought EVERYONE DIED because of stupid Merrik. I thought Ella die AGAIN. Then everyone died? There was like ten pages left and they were all dead, I thought the book ended right there because it said FILE ENDED. But it was so smart. Destroy the reader and trick the authority. I'm glad that they made it out, I'm just scared Ella is going to die in the next book since she hasn't used her legs in literally forever and what happens if she has to run?
I am glad that Rapier redeemed himself in the end because actions are bigger that words and he did it because he still loved her no matter what happened. Love can't be erased and Hanna still cared about him even after his betrayal.
Let's talk about AIDEN
I love AIDEN and he can be so funny sometimes like
I will never understand why humans make these jokes about procreation. I think that the writing style for AIDEN is amazing. The vocabulary and the way he weaves his sentences feel like an artificial intelligence, except it's still understandable vocabulary to the reader. I think whichever author wrote AIDEN's parts did an amazing job embodying the voice of artificial intelligence.
Though long books are intimidating, they are necessary for getting all the information and good writing and pace for the whole plot. A bigger book will include everything. The pace was slower at times but it definitely sped up at the end and kept the reader on edge. The way the BiTech soldiers were eliminated over the course of the book was spread out so well, that it didn't seem rushed or lucky or anything like that.
Overall I can tell how much talent these writers have, and how much time and effort went into the pages of design for special typographical pages. The detail or fantastic dialogue with Nik incorporating jokes was spectacular. Just the dynamic between Ella, Hanna, and Nik was so fun to read.
Gemina was FANTASTIC.
That is all.
Gemina is by far one of my all time favorites. Though the formatting is so different, the writers incorporate so stunning details and some of the best dialogue I've ever witnessed. Gemina had everything from a book you would live but MORE. It had the perfect blend of different paces and of characters you can't help but feel for and love. I post-it my books and this book was a post it forest when I was done.
SPOILER SECTION
This book made me go crazy at the end because Ella is my favorite character and watching here die and then be alive and then think she was dead again put me on this emotional roller coaster. And with Nik on the train....oh my god. SO THAT'S WHY THERE ARE STAINS COVERING THAT DAMN NOTEBOOK. I love and dislike sometimes how realistic this is. Unlike some books where characters get lucky, practically every single time, the characters get unlucky and they get out of the situation by pure skill alone. It shows how realistically, luck can't always be the one to get you out, and there are no miracles to surviving. The fights were genius with the strategy and quick movements of Donnelly doing this and that subtlety to take her enemy down. The genius of the strategy reminds me of Six of Crows with plots and twists that I could never think of and that are so insanely clever.
I like Gemina more than Illuminae. I think thatI enjoyed the story line more and the formatting was better. I enjoyed more visuals and I think that the sarcasm and witty banter between the characters was something I just loved so much more. The formatting was even cooler with crazy amazing designed typography and the duel writing from each parallel world with flipped text. There was that one awesome part where Hanna is crawling through air vents and the text follows the visuals of the pipes. Hanna's drawings made me very happy and I think Marie Lu did I fantastic job drawing.
The Lanima were something that scared me. I imagined these slimy black parasites slithering around and sucking the life from these people. Without them many BiTech people would be alive, yet that time with Ella getting strangled by one broke my heart. I thought she died and I was crying over how such a strong girl like this could be brought to nothing by a horrible parasite. After Hanna and Nik kissed I was SO happy and it was amazing. I put my book down and pumped my fists in the air. But the next moment I was frickin crying because When that Lanima came U was so scared one of them would die.
But that ending? Damn. I thought EVERYONE DIED because of stupid Merrik. I thought Ella die AGAIN. Then everyone died? There was like ten pages left and they were all dead, I thought the book ended right there because it said FILE ENDED. But it was so smart. Destroy the reader and trick the authority. I'm glad that they made it out, I'm just scared Ella is going to die in the next book since she hasn't used her legs in literally forever and what happens if she has to run?
I am glad that Rapier redeemed himself in the end because actions are bigger that words and he did it because he still loved her no matter what happened. Love can't be erased and Hanna still cared about him even after his betrayal.
Let's talk about AIDEN
I love AIDEN and he can be so funny sometimes like
I will never understand why humans make these jokes about procreation. I think that the writing style for AIDEN is amazing. The vocabulary and the way he weaves his sentences feel like an artificial intelligence, except it's still understandable vocabulary to the reader. I think whichever author wrote AIDEN's parts did an amazing job embodying the voice of artificial intelligence.
Though long books are intimidating, they are necessary for getting all the information and good writing and pace for the whole plot. A bigger book will include everything. The pace was slower at times but it definitely sped up at the end and kept the reader on edge. The way the BiTech soldiers were eliminated over the course of the book was spread out so well, that it didn't seem rushed or lucky or anything like that.
Overall I can tell how much talent these writers have, and how much time and effort went into the pages of design for special typographical pages. The detail or fantastic dialogue with Nik incorporating jokes was spectacular. Just the dynamic between Ella, Hanna, and Nik was so fun to read.
Gemina was FANTASTIC.
That is all.