Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff – Book Review (Spoiler-free!!)

Hello lovelies and welcome to my review for Illuminae!

I just finished reading this book and I had so many thoughts about it so here they are!

Title: Illuminae (The Illuminae files #1)

Authors: Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Synopsis: (Jay Kristoff’s words) Illuminae is the  classic tale of Girl meets Boy, Girl loses Boy, parents and planet and ends up on a crippled spaceship with a mad computer, a deadly virus outbreak in the middle of an interstellar war. Isn’t that the coolest plotline ever?

Published: on October 20th, 2015 by Knopf Books for Young Readers

Read: from December 05 to 10, 2016 (I actually read 400 out of the 600 pages on the 10th, so I finished it on that day). It can easily be read in one-sitting

5/5 stars (One of the best books I’ve read so far!!)

REVIEW:

Plot: The book  is 600 pages long and consequently, it’s a little bit hard to get into it at first. The world setting and documents take a little while to get used to, since it’s so unfamiliar but once you’re used to it, the format is addicting. After 200 pages, I was hooked and I couldn’t put the book down: I read in the bus, at school, right before going to bed….It was such an interesting story, full of twists and suspense. It was better than I expected and I had heard only good reviews about it. It’s an incredibly smart tale, one of kind, and definitely worth reading. The characters were smart, sarcastic, resourceful, endearing. It’s an incredible lesson about life, love, death, survival insticts and machines. I loved every bit of the story and how well developped it is; I can only congratulate the authors.

Format: The book has a unique format, it’s told through “a fascinating dossier of hacked documents—including emails, schematics, military files, IMs, medical reports, interviews, and more”(Goodreads). The documents are so well done and so well thought and I can’t imagine the work it took to come up with them. The book’s format is what drew me to pick it up and it was honestly worth it.

Characters: Well Kady Grant is from now on my favorite heroine ever. She is a survivor and her sense of sacrifice is something we should all learn from. She was talented, brave, strong, sarcastic and even though she sucks at it, she was romantic. AND she’s a badass.

Ezra Mason can be added to my list of “perfect fictional boyfriends”, like really. I loved him, I loved him, I loved him. No review can do justice of how great he is. I loved every single time he was mentionned and I honestly want to know more about him in the following books!

Aidan: though he/it is an Artificial Intelligence, he deserves a spot in this review, since he was a major part of the story. It was interesting to see our opinion of him evolve. We kinda grew attatched to him and saw the way he/it thought and his/its motives. It was really nice.

Hope you enjoyed, much love!

Karla 🙂 xx