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4.27 AVERAGE
4.27 AVERAGE
not giving it a full 5 stars because there are still bits of the plot where im like "okay but why was that useful, what was the explanation on why that happened" but they're small details.
the epistolary retelling of this is absolute chef's kiss, shoutout to brandon sanderson for recommending this book in one of his lectures
Now...Yes. Yes. YES.
Ihave to say...I had gotten fed up with YA. Especially YA dystopian. It all started to sound the same - angsty, dark, and über-romantic. But the premise of Illuminae intrigued me and I liked the idea of the format, so I gave it a shot.
I am soooooo glad I did. I was still slightly skeptical through the first 5 pages of so, but after that, it literally gripped me and did not. let. go. I was completely taken in by all of the characters - big and small, villainous or heroic - the authors have the sympathetic character thing down to a science. There was an extremely palpable tension throughout the entire book, one that has completely taken over my brain and is screaming at me to pick up the next book! It was something different, which is always refreshing.
Here’s to Illuminae restoring my faith in YA and hoping that the next is just as good as this one!
I listen to his heartbeat. Hear him breathe. As though becomes motion and motion becomes all that lies between him and his end. As the black is burning blue with the light of tiny funeral pyres. As his missiles and bullets take away his enemy. All they were and will ever be. I can taste it in his whispers. See it in the tiny photograph he has taped to his console. All he thinks of amid this loveless dance. All he cares about here on the edge of forever, is her. He does not want to die. Not because he is afraid. Simply because of he cannot bear the thought of leaving her behind. And there, in that tiny moment, I envy him.
I’m going to be completely honest here. Sci-fi scares me. If it isn’t cutesy or fun, it takes a lot of time for me to summon enough courage to read it. Add in the thickness and formatting of Illuminae, well I’ve never been so intimidated by a book. Yet, after months of sitting idle on my shelves, I picked it up out of curiosity around 6pm that night. I ended up reading all 600 pages in one sitting, finishing around midnight. And just, holy cow. I kept on telling myself, “I’ll just read 50 more pages” over and over again until the entire book was complete and I was left empty inside. Once you get used to the formatting and start truly understanding the stakes the characters are in, it is impossible to put down.
I loved this book. I loved it so much. In fact, it was the first book I have ever read in one sitting, without the intention of reading it in one sitting. I’ve already forced my friend to buy her own copy of it.
Okay. So plot. The plot.
In 2575 a large, powerful company called Bitch Industries (okay, so it is actually BeiTech Industries, but if you take the e’s away...) destroys this planet, sending the inhabitants the survive to flee onto three spaceships: the Alexander, the Hypatia, and the Copernicus. The two main characters, Kady and Ezra, escape onto three different spacecrafts: the Hypatia and the Alexander respectively. Kady and Ezra used to be dating, but they had just broken up the morning of the attack. Now, separated on the spaceships, they communicate together via IM and slowly begin to realize that there is more threat to the spaceships then they realize…
Characters….CHARACTERS…
Kady
“I am frequently underestimated. I think it's because I'm short.”
I didn’t really like Kady at first. I’m not sure why, but I just didn’t. However, around the 200-page mark, something clicked and I suddenly loved her. Her snarkiness, her attitude, her kick-buttness. She was such a strong, smart, independent women and I loved her for that.
Ezra
“I should have told you I loved you every day. I should have given you the stars.”
Ezra. Ezra, Ezra, Ezra… He was kind of the exact opposite of Kady for me. I loved him at first, but slowly I started to care less for him. Towards the end, it was almost as if he was in the way. For me, at least. He was a sweet, loyal guy, and very romantic. He did say and do a lot of very cheesy, romantic things. But in the end, he didn’t really do anything to move the plot along. This may just be my opinion, however, and I could be totally and completely wrong.
AIDAN
"Am I Not Merciful?"
AIDAN isn’t human. He’s the AI on the Alexander and though he was beyond creepy and disturbing, he is my absolute favorite. He was the reason why I couldn’t put this book down.I enjoy weird, gray characters and AIDAN was definitely that. He wasn’t even gray, but more of a dark, dark gray, or perhaps a light black. I understand that if it wasn’t for Aidan, then half the crap they went through wouldn’t have happened. Yet, I feel like he truly added something incredibly important to the story. Despite the fact that he is an AI, I believed he truly showed how important it is to be human, and how being human is something even machines would strive for.
The ***Romance***
Yes, the book starts of with stating that Kady and Ezra have a thing together, however complicated that thing may be. Yes, in the first two hundred pages or so the romance is more of an issue. But when things start kicking off, the romance is the last thing I was worried about. In the end, I didn’t really care for the romance too much. I was more focused on if they were gonna survive as opposed to if their relationship was gonna survive. This book is much, much more than the romance aspect. It may be there, and I was rooting for it to stay alive, but there is still so many other things that add to this book.
The FREAKIGN FORMATTING
If you know anything about this book, you know about the formatting. Never in my life have I ever seen another book that could even compare to this one. It’s IMs, it’s pictures, it’s medical files of [a:Laini Taylor|324620|Laini Taylor|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1224474224p2/324620.jpg], it’s pages and pages and pages of the names of people who died. It’s just. Woah. It’s just. I can’t even describe how unique it is.
In Conclusion...
I haven’t seen a negative review of this book, which should be a major clue that if you haven’t read it, then you need to pick it up right now. Reading this book is such a crazy experience. It is the closest thing you can get to being on a rollercoaster, without actually being on a rollercoaster.
Don’t get me wrong, though, just because I loved this book, doesn’t mean it didn’t scare the crap out of me. It did. Which is the reason why it didn’t get a full five stars. I had a very hard time sleeping that night I finished it and is probably the main reason I haven’t picked [b:Gemina|29236299|Gemina (The Illuminae Files, #2)|Amie Kaufman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1469408557s/29236299.jpg|44560442] up yet. I’m not ready to be scared again just yet.
Graphic: Mental illness, Torture, Blood, Pandemic/Epidemic