Scan barcode
A review by julieannasbooks
Illuminae by Jay Kristoff, Amie Kaufman
5.0
I want to start this review by talking about some of the smaller details of this book, and while small, they really made up so much of what I loved about this book.
There are several pages of this book that feature binary numbers, which appear at first to be decorative. They're in the background of journals, as part of a computer's dialogue, and towards the end, there are four pages filled. Enter me, the computer nerd. I know that past representations of computing in the media tends to be horribly inaccurate and that these numbers, as well as computer code, end up just being decoration. But I decide I'm going to take a magnifying glass to this book and enter these numbers into a binary to text converter, because why not? And I ended up being pleasantly surprised because pretty much everything I entered ended up being some sort of hidden message. If you have read this book, I highly recommend taking a look at the binary in this book (and when I say take a look I mean Google it because silly me, the work has already been done).
Just these little hidden messages alone injected so much more interesting dialogue for the book. They're sort of like Easter Eggs, like the ones Pixar slips in for every movie that you have to find in the background. But when I found these, I asked myself - what else did I miss in this book? Had I not been the computer nerd that I am I would have skipped all those pages and would not have found that. The second time around, will I catch something else?
That all being said, I love the attention to detail in Illuminae. Not just for examples like these, but also for the number of people that were consulted for the sake of accuracy. Hackers and astronomers, for example, were consulted to ensure realistic space-physics and hacking abilities. I'm the type of person that gets so badly distracted by unrealistic scenarios or glaringly obvious mistakes, and while I'm no physicist, I really appreciate that the authors put in the effort to make this as accurate as they could.
Illuminae is well-known for its mixed media format, and this, while not a type of book I had read before, was enjoyable in ways I hadn't imagined. Reading a story in the form of reports really changed how I made my mental movie as I read this, which made things very interesting and I'd love to read books similar to this one's format.
The story itself was gripping, although it took me a little bit of time to get into. There were plenty of things I wasn't expecting here, and I'm really happy with the storyline.
I'd say something to the lines of "I hope the next book is even better", but immediately after I finished Illuminae I read Gemina in two days, and have already moved on to Obsidio. If you're looking for a sci-fi YA, read this one. And if you haven't really delved into sci-fi YA but want to, still read this one! This was definitely an instant favorite for me, and I think next time I read it it'll be alongside the audiobook, because I've heard the audiobook was excellent as well.
There are several pages of this book that feature binary numbers, which appear at first to be decorative. They're in the background of journals, as part of a computer's dialogue, and towards the end, there are four pages filled. Enter me, the computer nerd. I know that past representations of computing in the media tends to be horribly inaccurate and that these numbers, as well as computer code, end up just being decoration. But I decide I'm going to take a magnifying glass to this book and enter these numbers into a binary to text converter, because why not? And I ended up being pleasantly surprised because pretty much everything I entered ended up being some sort of hidden message. If you have read this book, I highly recommend taking a look at the binary in this book (and when I say take a look I mean Google it because silly me, the work has already been done).
Just these little hidden messages alone injected so much more interesting dialogue for the book. They're sort of like Easter Eggs, like the ones Pixar slips in for every movie that you have to find in the background. But when I found these, I asked myself - what else did I miss in this book? Had I not been the computer nerd that I am I would have skipped all those pages and would not have found that. The second time around, will I catch something else?
That all being said, I love the attention to detail in Illuminae. Not just for examples like these, but also for the number of people that were consulted for the sake of accuracy. Hackers and astronomers, for example, were consulted to ensure realistic space-physics and hacking abilities. I'm the type of person that gets so badly distracted by unrealistic scenarios or glaringly obvious mistakes, and while I'm no physicist, I really appreciate that the authors put in the effort to make this as accurate as they could.
Illuminae is well-known for its mixed media format, and this, while not a type of book I had read before, was enjoyable in ways I hadn't imagined. Reading a story in the form of reports really changed how I made my mental movie as I read this, which made things very interesting and I'd love to read books similar to this one's format.
The story itself was gripping, although it took me a little bit of time to get into. There were plenty of things I wasn't expecting here, and I'm really happy with the storyline.
Spoiler
Far too many stories, whether YA books or TV, have unrealistic outcomes. How many times on TV am I going to see a 13-year-old hack a huge entity in five seconds with no effort or repercussions? But this book was different to me because while Kady and Ez were the ones to come out of this, there was quite a bit that went awry throughout this whole book that they just couldn't fix.I'd say something to the lines of "I hope the next book is even better", but immediately after I finished Illuminae I read Gemina in two days, and have already moved on to Obsidio. If you're looking for a sci-fi YA, read this one. And if you haven't really delved into sci-fi YA but want to, still read this one! This was definitely an instant favorite for me, and I think next time I read it it'll be alongside the audiobook, because I've heard the audiobook was excellent as well.