Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff - Book Review!

Hello, everyone! I'm back, and I'm here to review Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff! I know it's been a full week since the last post, but I took an unexpected holiday, and I wasn't able to keep up with the blog. But I promise to be back more this week. Now, Illuminae is not your ordinary book. Instead of traditional storytelling, the story is portrayed through government files that is centered on an attack of a mining planet. But enough about that, let's get onto the review!

So, as I stated in the intro, this story is not told through traditional methods. Instead of a traditional narrative, the book consists of files that have been put together by "unknown" persons (at least at the beginning) to tell of the tragedy that befell a small mining planet when an enemy mining corporation invaded the planet. However, the story does follow two main characters Kady and Ezra, who broke up the morning of the invasion, but as the story progresses, they have to come together to overcome all types of obstacles.

I will admit that this was a difficult book to get into. Between the science fiction elements and the drastically different story telling, I found it a bit difficult to connect with the story. However, the book does have a few things going for it that made me want to continue reading.

First, there's the snarky attitude that hits you in the beginning and continues on throughout the book. On the very first page, the "narrator" says that they marked out all of the swearing because of the wishes for the reader. But they also call out the hypocrisy of keeping it "clean" in the terms of language when the file is all about the mass murder of an entire planet. It made me unbelievably happy, and I had to read more.

I also enjoyed the characters, especially the protagonists. Kady is a sarcastic, short hacker who knows just what she can do and knows when someone is holding something from her, which she doesn't tolerate. Her dialogue is fantastic! Then there's Ezra, he's a bit more clueless, but it doesn't lessens his feelings for his friends or former girlfriend. He's courageous, and he pushes ahead despite the terrible things that happens to him.

Another aspect that really impressed me was the quality of the graphics in the novel. For the most part, we don't really get any descriptions of how things looks or what they seem like to the other characters, so when we do get graphics, they need to be great. And they are! The graphics of the ships alone was enough to stun me speechless.

One concern that I had for a novel is that because everything has been "sanitized" to create the government files, I thought that the novel would like dramatic, emotional elements that would pull my heartstrings and force me to hurl the book across the room (you know, the good stuff). But when terrible things did happen in the novel, I felt it. It hurt, but I cared about what happened to the characters despite the fact that sometimes all I saw of them was a screen name on a IM board.

The one problem I did have with the novel happened close to the end of the novel. Things start to get really strange, and while I found what the authors did to be quite beautiful and out of the box, it wasn't super fun to read. I would go in and out of paying attention, and that's not something you want in a book.

All in all, I'm giving this novel four tablets out of five!

That's it for this post! Comment down below with unusual reads that you still found entertaining. Subscribe to the blog by adding your email address to the Subscribe Box down below or off to the right. Add me to your circles by clicking the Google+ Button on you right. Follow me on twitter @KK_Donna_Blog for up to date information on the blog and ridiculousness about my life. Follow the tumblr dedicated to the blog which you can find at this link. Read on, lovelies! I'll see y'all next post!