Illuminae

3.5 stars.

Pros:
-Interesting format. I listened to the audiobook so I missed out on the art but the full cast made up for it imo.
-Unpredictable twists.
-Some delightfully gruesome moments.
-Anti-corporate theme.

Cons:
-Flat characters.
-Central teenage romance that seems to be based on absolutely nothing except overly cute banter.
-Strong Female Protagonist TM.

Usually I'm more of a character over plot kind of person. I can handle long, plotless meanderings as long as the characters are compelling. In this case it was the plot that grabbed me as the characters are completely one dimensional and the relationships between them are flimsy at best. The main character is your stereotypical unrealistically Strong Female Character with all the brains and the beauty and her relationship with her boyfriend is overwrought and uninteresting. But I kept reading to find out what happened next regardless. The short chapters and variety of formats (IMs, emails, descriptions of security footage, wikipedia entries) kept the story moving and I genuinely could not predict what was going to happen. There were some super creepy elements that I don't want to give away and I was really more in it for the atmosphere than anything.

Will keep reading the series but have middling expectations.

Edit: S forgot to mention how fking annoying it is that this fking book fking censors every f***king swear. At first I thought I had some weird G rated version of the book but no this is how all versions are. In the audiobook it's fucking annoying. I had a look at the ebook and it seems just as bad. This is a YA book but lots of YA books have swears. Teenagers swear. Probably more than anyone. This book is full of graphic violence but god forbid we allow bad language.

This genre isn't my usual go-to. I don't usually go for science fiction. What drew me in about this book was the format-- the style. I love a book with an unconventional way to tell the story. Chat logs, pictures, dossiers, prose. If it's anything but standard paragraphs, I am on it like a magnet.



So, I can say that I found the general reading experience enjoyable, despite my few gripes. I had the unfortunate experience of disliking the two main characters, Kady and Ezra. More specifically, I disliked the interactions between the two, and even more so, their "romance". Luckily, as they were mostly chat logs, thy were very easy to speed through to get back to what I feel is the real meat of the story, the reason I could ignore the teenage love story and keep going with vigor: A space war, a deadly virus, and AIDAN. Truly, the bulk of the story is about this. And while I wouldn't say "PHENOMENAL" in a caps-lock frenzy like many others, the story is gripping and the end left me wanting more. Left me feeling like the story is in it's infancy. And with the continuations in Gemina and Obsidio, that is all the more apparent. This is just the beginning for Illuminae, there's so much more that is so much bigger that this first book could hardly touch on, and I can't wait to take on the next book.