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For me, Illuminae was not an overwhelming read, partly because of technical problems, partly because of the novel itself. I do not see me reading the other two novels in this series in the future.
The book is designed as a compilation of documents. Chat messages, emails, surveillance reports, diary entries, log files and some more experimental approaches to visualize text are the core of the novel and most certainly its most unique feature. I have not seen the printed version but the kindle version is flawed. While it is possible for the most parts to change the font size (with effect), there are also several graphical pages which have a fixed design and are more a picture with text. In this pictures, the font size is too small for the little screen of a kindle. Due to a different ratio, there is also a big white border around the images, which further reduces the size of the pictures. Yes, it is possible to tap these pages, then zoom in and then move the picture from left to right, from up to down, but that killed for me the reading flow and so I jumped this parts mostly. I think that it would have been possible to redesign this pages for the not so little market of the Kindle ebooks for more reading comfort.
The other big flaw of the novel is, that it is too long for the plot and that I felt very bored on the last 200 (of 599) pages. The story starts very strong and I really was invested in what was going on, but more and more I knew exactly where the story was heading, the little traces of character development were finished and the turns of events did not even feel surprising but more like random decisions of the author. The female protagonist is not likable and her motivations are not convincing but still, she becomes the big superhero of the story, which does not fit in my opinion to her character or to her relationship to other characters. The motivations of the most important antagonist stay also obscure.
Reading it is not a waste of time, especially if you avoid the e-reader edition of the book and stick to the printed version, but I have difficulties understanding why this book has its perfect ratings. I hope that other readers see more in the story than I do and that the ratings are not just the result of the different way of storytelling.
The book is designed as a compilation of documents. Chat messages, emails, surveillance reports, diary entries, log files and some more experimental approaches to visualize text are the core of the novel and most certainly its most unique feature. I have not seen the printed version but the kindle version is flawed. While it is possible for the most parts to change the font size (with effect), there are also several graphical pages which have a fixed design and are more a picture with text. In this pictures, the font size is too small for the little screen of a kindle. Due to a different ratio, there is also a big white border around the images, which further reduces the size of the pictures. Yes, it is possible to tap these pages, then zoom in and then move the picture from left to right, from up to down, but that killed for me the reading flow and so I jumped this parts mostly. I think that it would have been possible to redesign this pages for the not so little market of the Kindle ebooks for more reading comfort.
The other big flaw of the novel is, that it is too long for the plot and that I felt very bored on the last 200 (of 599) pages. The story starts very strong and I really was invested in what was going on, but more and more I knew exactly where the story was heading, the little traces of character development were finished and the turns of events did not even feel surprising but more like random decisions of the author. The female protagonist is not likable and her motivations are not convincing but still, she becomes the big superhero of the story, which does not fit in my opinion to her character or to her relationship to other characters. The motivations of the most important antagonist stay also obscure.
Reading it is not a waste of time, especially if you avoid the e-reader edition of the book and stick to the printed version, but I have difficulties understanding why this book has its perfect ratings. I hope that other readers see more in the story than I do and that the ratings are not just the result of the different way of storytelling.