Review: Illuminae

Illuminae by Amie Kaufman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a tough one to review.

I mean, it definitely gets an A for effort. The format is crazy. Very unique. Of course, a decent amount was hard to read: spiraling text, strike through, grey-on-black words. But it's very pretty.

Now I guess we get to the full disclosure bit: I'm not big on sci-fi. Nor am I big on the whole 'mysterious virus' trope. I guess that's why I've put this series off for so long. But with so many people raving about it I had to get to it eventually and, I must say, it didn't quite live up to the hype.

The story is okay. Not my genre of choice, but because it's YA there wasn't too much boring science stuff so that was a blessing. I liked the relationship between Kady and Ezra, once their personalities became a little more evident. Ezra had some cool friends, too. But when a book is composed entirely of 'documents' it's a lot harder to get character depth. This made it harder for me to get attached. I liked Ezra and McNulty but I struggled with Kady. She was sassy and fierce but she kinda bugged me. I also hated AIDAN and the concept of it and everything to do with it, and since it's kind of a big part of the story, that didn't really help. (view spoiler)[Reading all of its pages in the last half of the book was an absolute drainer. Not to mention, super illogical. It's a bit hard for me to wrap my head around a computer that writes poetically. Plus, the whole fixation on Kady thing was super creepy. (hide spoiler)]

I honestly hope I'm long dead before artificial intelligence becomes a thing for real.

Spaceships do nothing for me so the setting was pretty bland, especially since it never really changed. All steel and chrome and shiny surfaces. Eh. And the drama was just ... not my kind of drama.

(view spoiler)[I hate zombies. I hate the whole 'there is a mysterious virus infecting people and it turns them into rabid monsters that want to kill everything and they're violent and almost unstoppable' plot. How bland. Even in space there was nothing particularly original about this virus. There's just not a lot to work with in terms of creativity, except for deaths. So that was never gonna entertain me. (hide spoiler)]

I honestly cared more about Kady and Ezra getting back together and there just wasn't enough of them interacting to have me as head-over-heels for this book as everyone else seems to be.

It was certainly a fast read for me, though I slowed down at the last two hundred pages or so. And it's easy language, and a lot of action, so I guess the sci-fi fans will be all over it.

I think if it wasn't so hyped, I might have appreciated it more. I did love the wacky format, but after a while the novelty wears off and you're left with a book that's just a pain to read because you have to hold it up to your face and turn it in different directions etc.

A decent sort of book with a unique format, but nothing particularly special about the story. Hopefully things will get a bit more interesting in the sequel, though. The ending did leave me hope for that!

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