Illuminae (The Illuminae Files, #1) in Aussie Readers

Jul 01, 2015 Rebecca rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: loveozya, young-adult, read-in-2015, genre-sci-fi

No up. No down. No sky. No ground. Just endless dark shot through with tiny spears of sunlight older than you and your entire species stacked end to end. You want to feel small? Spend sixty seconds in a Cyclone’s cockpit, chum. Look out at the nothing and feel it looking back. Then you know exactly how much you add up to.

Illuminae is one of those novels where you’re thrown head-first into the story. There is a complete lack of info dumping to help you get acquainted with the surroundings, yo

No up. No down. No sky. No ground. Just endless dark shot through with tiny spears of sunlight older than you and your entire species stacked end to end. You want to feel small? Spend sixty seconds in a Cyclone’s cockpit, chum. Look out at the nothing and feel it looking back. Then you know exactly how much you add up to.

Illuminae is one of those novels where you’re thrown head-first into the story. There is a complete lack of info dumping to help you get acquainted with the surroundings, you just have to adapt and move forward. What is Kerenza? What the hell do UTA/WUC stand for? What even is going on? The trick is: just keep reading. Trust me, you’ll want to. It’s so very worth it.

I feel like we’re so used to being eased into new worlds, that starting Illuminae was like a shock to the system. The first page took more concentration than I’m used to having to give, but it wasn’t long before I was submerged in the story. Honestly I was confused for a good portion of the beginning of the book. but like, a good confused - if such a thing exists. Fear not, everything falls into place and before you know it you start to wonder why every book you read isn’t like this.

The story is told in multiple types of formats. From interview transcripts to “unipedia” pages, from e-mail to military-style reports. Medical documents. Instant Messages. There are a plethora of styles and they work so incredibly well together. Not only that, but the way the story is told allows for some of the most aesthetically pleasing pages I’ve ever come across in a book.

Kady and Ezra are cute as fuck, both separate and especially together. Their banter is about seven kinds of awesome. AIDEN holds a special place in my heart. I still can’t believe that I fell for the damn AI. Don’t even talk to me about Zhang.

Somehow I managed to fall in love with all the secondary characters as much as I loved the main ones. The only piece of advice I can give you is to do so at your own risk. There was a lot of heartbreak involved lol. ...more

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Apr 14, 2018 Ang -PNR Book Lover Reviews rated it it was amazing

Holy Smokes, I am finished! I can’t even. I’m left speechless 😶 this book and audio was a masterpiece! Bookish Friends if you can, you should definitely check the audio out, and #pnrbookloverreviews read along with you gigantic book! This book deserves all the hype, all the stars ⭐️ 🌟🌟🌟🌟 I now need book two!
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@misterkristoff and @amiekaufmanauthor thank you for writing such a fabulous story, I have no fingernails left lol and have probably annoyed everyone with my OMG moments. Totally worth it.
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May 27, 2018 Jaime West rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favourites, books-i-own, sci-fi

Wow. This was a ride. These books are intimidating and being 600+ pages, argh! But with the final book just released, I was like - DO IT!
It took me a while to get on board with the format, but once I did, I loved it. So different and exciting, I liked the characters and the ending was GREAT! Kady is a kick ass woman! I felt tired for her, poor girl never sleeps!
On to book two - god the hardbacks are so pretty!

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Sep 08, 2015 Lauredhel added it

Shelves: science-fiction

I am nowhere near as excited about this book as others seem to be. Cookie cutter personality-free pink-haired protagonist. Unappealing sexist love interest. "Psychotic" constantly used to mean "murderous". Physically very difficult to read: tiny fonts, dark grey on black all caps.

This book should be my jam: YA, SF, plague! But all I am left with is "meh".

My hands and wrists hurt, a lot. It wasn't worth it. But maybe it will be for you.

Warning: major horror elements, including murders of childr ...more

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Apr 22, 2019 Jenny Delandro rated it liked it

Reading a story that is in the form of communication transcripts is a challenging. But I found the page after page of “redacted” script was annoying. And the wavy lines of script were hard to read and confusing... were they included that way to increase the page numbers? Because the storyline is good and it seems that the blocks of black and wavy lines of conversations was unnecessary and distracting.
I liked the ending and it seems likely that there is more stories to come.
I will seek out more f ...more

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