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A review by rereader33
Illuminae by Jay Kristoff, Amie Kaufman
3.0
Thankful November Reading Challenge
Prompt: read a sci-fi novel
Believe it or not, this has been on my radar for upwards of 5 years. I never got around to because I am very easily distracted and not a huge sci-fi fan, but was recommended it by one of my friends (thank you, Gabrielle!). And yeah, I read it...and I have mixed feelings about it.
I'll get my praise out of the way right now: the writing structure and set up is easily what kept this at 3 stars. I loved the the audio logs, the interview logs, the words turned to pictures stuff, loved it all. I definitely think it helped with the experience and made Illuminae stand out from a prose stand point. Also, Kady was genuinely enjoyable and was easily my favorite character in the entire story. She had a good balance of "stereotypical bad-ass dystopian YA protagonist" and "actually well-written female character". Seriously, if she was the only main character, I would have been so much happy reading this novel. Which brings me into the negatives...
Honestly, I really wished Ezra and Kady hadn't been love interests. I didn't told vibe with their chemistry and since we rarely go to see them interact from a third person perspective, their relationship didn't work for me. I liked them well enough individually, but not as a couple. I also didn't care for any of the side characters and while Kaufman and Kristoff did the best they could with their prose structure, not having descriptive language to describe character interactions made it hard for me to connect with any of the other characters. And then there's AIDAN.
Holy
Fucking
Shit
AIDAN
SPOLER ALERT!
Look guys, I get it. This is a sci-fi story with AI in it, per sci-fi standards said AI HAS to be evil and/or morally grey because AI bad, no can feel emotions, blah blah FUCKING blah. I honestly wouldn't have minded this as much because no joke almost every AI in sci-fi is evil, but what made this worse is that AIDAN is pretty much redeemed towards the end, DESPITE THE FACT THAT IT WAS ACTIVELY KILLING INNOCENT PEOPLE BECAUSE IT COULDN'T USE ITS WORDS AND EXPLAIN ITS REASONING TO THE CREW. And NO, I am NOT entertaining the idea that, "Oh, AIDAN didn't tell them because humans are too emotional and wouldn't do the right thing-" BULLFUCKINGSHIT. AIDAN didn't even fucking TRY to explain his reasoning, he just decided to commit mass genocide on a group of innocent people because "protecting" people is what he was "programmed" to do, because apparently logic was part of his original fucking program. And again, I wouldn't mind this as much if AIDAN remained an evil/morally grey entity, but giving him a redemption arc towards the end completely soured any chance of me tolerating this character.
Okay, this review was a lot rantier than I was imagining, so let's wrap this up. Did I like this? Yeah, it was okay. It wasn't horrible and had some pretty dope moments, so I can't say it was bad. Will I be continuing with the trilogy? No. I'm not a huge fan of book series (unless its manga) anyway, and the ending didn't give me enough reason to continue with it. Do I recommend this to others? Sure. I think this was a solid start to a YA sci-fi series and I think a lot of people will enjoy it. Give it a shot if you want to, I'm sure most people will love this more than me.
Prompt: read a sci-fi novel
Believe it or not, this has been on my radar for upwards of 5 years. I never got around to because I am very easily distracted and not a huge sci-fi fan, but was recommended it by one of my friends (thank you, Gabrielle!). And yeah, I read it...and I have mixed feelings about it.
I'll get my praise out of the way right now: the writing structure and set up is easily what kept this at 3 stars. I loved the the audio logs, the interview logs, the words turned to pictures stuff, loved it all. I definitely think it helped with the experience and made Illuminae stand out from a prose stand point. Also, Kady was genuinely enjoyable and was easily my favorite character in the entire story. She had a good balance of "stereotypical bad-ass dystopian YA protagonist" and "actually well-written female character". Seriously, if she was the only main character, I would have been so much happy reading this novel. Which brings me into the negatives...
Honestly, I really wished Ezra and Kady hadn't been love interests. I didn't told vibe with their chemistry and since we rarely go to see them interact from a third person perspective, their relationship didn't work for me. I liked them well enough individually, but not as a couple. I also didn't care for any of the side characters and while Kaufman and Kristoff did the best they could with their prose structure, not having descriptive language to describe character interactions made it hard for me to connect with any of the other characters. And then there's AIDAN.
Holy
Fucking
Shit
AIDAN
SPOLER ALERT!
Look guys, I get it. This is a sci-fi story with AI in it, per sci-fi standards said AI HAS to be evil and/or morally grey because AI bad, no can feel emotions, blah blah FUCKING blah. I honestly wouldn't have minded this as much because no joke almost every AI in sci-fi is evil, but what made this worse is that AIDAN is pretty much redeemed towards the end, DESPITE THE FACT THAT IT WAS ACTIVELY KILLING INNOCENT PEOPLE BECAUSE IT COULDN'T USE ITS WORDS AND EXPLAIN ITS REASONING TO THE CREW. And NO, I am NOT entertaining the idea that, "Oh, AIDAN didn't tell them because humans are too emotional and wouldn't do the right thing-" BULLFUCKINGSHIT. AIDAN didn't even fucking TRY to explain his reasoning, he just decided to commit mass genocide on a group of innocent people because "protecting" people is what he was "programmed" to do, because apparently logic was part of his original fucking program. And again, I wouldn't mind this as much if AIDAN remained an evil/morally grey entity, but giving him a redemption arc towards the end completely soured any chance of me tolerating this character.
Okay, this review was a lot rantier than I was imagining, so let's wrap this up. Did I like this? Yeah, it was okay. It wasn't horrible and had some pretty dope moments, so I can't say it was bad. Will I be continuing with the trilogy? No. I'm not a huge fan of book series (unless its manga) anyway, and the ending didn't give me enough reason to continue with it. Do I recommend this to others? Sure. I think this was a solid start to a YA sci-fi series and I think a lot of people will enjoy it. Give it a shot if you want to, I'm sure most people will love this more than me.