Illuminae | Review

It's been a few weeks since I closed the cover on Illuminae and I'm rethinking my initial rating of four stars.  I might be a hardass and lower it.  As I've written this review, I've gotten crankier and crankier about certain aspects, although I do have to be fair — this book grabbed my attention from the get-go, and it wasn't until late in the book that I started critiquing its faults.  Let's get down to it.

The novel is narrated through documents and messages, a type of updated epistolary style.  At first I thought that this would cramp the pacing, and it did to an extent, but not nearly as much as I anticipated.  For having all of its action be related as past events, Kristoff and Kaufman did an amazing job at making the the narrative seem like the present.

Our novel starts off with a cover letter for a compilation of documents.  The letter tells its recipient that the documents will relate the story of a catastrophic event on an illegal mining colony (in outer space).  We start off with two teenage survivors of the catastrophe being interviewed (our protagonists).

Before the catastrophe, Kady was a spunky, punky young lady with aspirations of college and traveling the universe.  Ezra was a talented G-ball jock with a close bond with his miner dad.  The two kids used to date.  Except, they messily broke up hours before the catastrophe occurred.  They both made it off the colony, thanks to Kady's badassery, but are on separate rescue vessels. Most of the novel follows their independent activities on different ships.  Ezra is drafted into the military as a pilot.  Kady is taken under the wing of an accomplished computer hacker.

I don't want to get into the plot further, because of spoilers, but there is a lot going on in Illuminae.  There's a pursuit across space, a deadly contagion, malfunctioning artificial intelligence, an evil corporation, and more!  To be honest, it was too much at times. One or two plot points could have been excluded and the story would have been much more streamlined.

Another thing that could have been improved was the style of narration that took up most of the climax. [spoiler]That of AIDEN, the Artificial Intelligence.[/spoiler] In my opinion, it was the least dynamic narrative style, and made the finale of the book annoying to read.  It was like reading high school poetry. Blah. I can't emphasize enough how much I disliked [spoiler]AIDEN.[/spoiler]  Speaking of high school, I hated the texting abbreviations and :P faces that littered the book.  Just personal preference.

One MORE thing.  I couldn't help but notice the extreme similarities between Illuminae and Kaufman's Starbound collaboration with Megan Spooner.  In fact, they are ridiculously alike. Now, writing similar works isn't exactly a sin, but Kaufman is risking becoming a one-note author, which isn't exactly good.  It definitely made me wonder, though, what traces of Jay Kristoff were in Illuminae?  Did he serve to make the male lead more authentic?  Is he responsible for AIDEN? I'm curious, because it's hard to tell.

Now that I've sufficiently ragged on Illuminae, let me spend some time praising it.  The book was good.  Period.  There's a lot of bad YA out there and Illuminae floats to the top without breaking a sweat. I was sucked in the the story immediately and read the book in one sitting. I enjoyed myself.  That is not to say, however, that there's no room for improvement.  I think the novel could have benefited from adding dimension to EVIL Corps, or whatever it's name is, having the characters be fleshed out further, shaving off plot bulk, and more.

All in all, I can see Illuminae being a popular book, but I doubt it'll be a breakthrough hit.