Illuminae (The Illuminae Files, #1) by Amie Kaufman, Jay Kristoff
Genres: Sci-Fi (YA)
Pages: 599
Goodreads

This morning, Kady thought breaking up with Ezra was the hardest thing she’d have to do.
This afternoon, her planet was invaded.
The year is 2575, and two rival megacorporations are at war over a planet that’s little more than an ice-covered speck at the edge of the universe. Too bad nobody thought to warn the people living on it. With enemy fire raining down on them, Kady and Ezra—who are barely even talking to each other—are forced to fight their way onto an evacuating fleet, with an enemy warship in hot pursuit.
But their problems are just getting started. A deadly plague has broken out and is mutating, with terrifying results; the fleet's AI, which should be protecting them, may actually be their enemy; and nobody in charge will say what’s really going on. As Kady hacks into a tangled web of data to find the truth, it's clear only one person can help her bring it all to light: the ex-boyfriend she swore she'd never speak to again.
Told through a fascinating dossier of hacked documents—including emails, schematics, military files, IMs, medical reports, interviews, and more—Illuminae is the first book in a heart-stopping, high-octane trilogy about lives interrupted, the price of truth, and the courage of everyday heroes.

This book is action-packed and filled with so many twists and turns. It keeps you guessing and surprises you throughout. It knows how to build the suspense, making you think you know what is going to happen then it just throws you in a different direction.

This is a good thing and a bad thing.

Usually, I love action-packed books. They keep you invested in the story and on the edge of your seat, this book partially succeeded in doing that for me. I think what held me back from being 100% invested was the fact there was too much stuff happening. At times, it was hard to follow. It incorporates so many ideas from a deadly virus, to a space chase, to an AI with emotions, to a tech industry with a secret plot – basically, anything that could have made a pretty good story on its own thrown together into one book. It became a little overwhelming and caused me to feel disconnected from the plot.

I think the characters is where this book lacked the most. It never delves deep enough into any of the characters to really feel emotionally connected.

Kady Grant is the main character. She’s supposed to be this kick-ass, girl power, type of female lead. I found her infuriating. She is arrogant, thinking she knows what is best for everyone, yet makes some of the dumbest decisions. I don’t want to spoil it for you so I won’t go into detail. I just found her to be extremely annoying.

The other characters the book focuses on are Ezra Mason (Kady’s ex-boyfriend) and AIDAN (the AI of the ship). The romance between Ezra and Kady came across as forced. Especially since they are getting chased by a huge battleship, their home was taken over by enemies, and their families are dead, yet they still have immature conversations over IMs about their petty fights. Personally, I didn’t even care about their relationship. I knew how I’d feel from the beginning when Kady was still so upset at Ezra she almost didn’t bother helping him from near death! (Note how I said she was arrogant and annoying?) I know she’s a teenager, but any human being should have the decency to put aside differences when their home is being blown up.

AIDAN was going through some existential crisis that just left me asking “why now? why, when everything has gone to shit and there is a giant battleship coming to kill them all does this AI decide he wants to know the meaning of his existance?!” Just seemed like a way to cram yet another plot idea into this already widely scattered plot.

On top of those 3 main characters, there were a ton of side characters that I don’t remember the names of or even what their purpose was. It was hard to keep track of who was who and what their jobs were.

As most of you know this book is written in the forms of IMs, e-mails, medical reports, military files, etc. At first I loved this idea, but then I began to notice that while the beginning of the book used many forms to tell the story, it started to just recycle the same 3: IMs, AIDAN’s records, and video surveillance reports. The novelty of it wore off and it began to feel very repetitive. Not only was the format repetitive, the writing itself was too. It seemed every conversation between Ezra and Kady was a regurgitation of their previous conversation, AIDAN continually went on about his midlife-crisis, Kady’s conversations with anyone else also came across as a rerun of previous conversations with a few changes to make it fit with the person. I started to skim over many pages because I already knew what it was going to say.

With that said, it is a fast-paced book. No, really, it is very fast-paced. I had to go back a page a couple of times because it jumped from one thing to the next, but it did keep you interested in what was going to happen next. There were times that the story really grabbed at my emotions – times that I put the book down because I just couldn’t believe what had just happened. Even if I didn’t feel connected to the characters, I was still shocked by some of the things they had to go through – if only they were just a bit more relatable.

I think this book is more attractive for its style than its story. The characters are flat, the plot is going in many different directions and the writing was mediocre. It’s great for action and suspense, but not for a real in-depth emotional connection. What it reminds me of is if you were to have never seen an episode of Doctor Who before, and watch a random one in the middle of a season, you’d be confused, the plot would be all over the place, a million things would be going on and there would be characters that you know are supposed to be important but you really just don’t care.

Rating Report
Plot
Characters
Writing
World Building
Overall:	3 / 5