Book Review: Illuminae

Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff (Goodreads link)
 
5 stars

This is not a typical book. It doesn't have chapters and the story isn't told in description and dialogue. Instead, the story unfolds through excerpts from journals and incident reports, emails between the main characters, and the internal monologues of a damaged computer (which reads almost like poetry).

It's beautiful.

Blueprints of the ship, coffee stains on the bottom of a file, multiple pages that are just the names and photos of the people who were confirmed dead. Blank pages when a character is lost in space. Pictures made of words.

The story itself would be great without all of that, too.

What starts as an attack on a planet by an enemy corporation quickly escalates into chaos. Three ships are trying to get to safety, the bad guys are on their tail, and a disease is turning people into wild, merciless killers.

Oh, and an artificial intelligence system, damaged in the attack, just blew up one of the ally ships.

The fleet's only hope is seventeen-year-old hacker Kady Grant. To save the ships - and her boyfriend - she has to risk everything and team up with some less than trustworthy characters to bring these atrocities to light.

This is a sci-fi book I would recommend to people who aren't sci-fi fans. Once you get used to the unconventional storytelling method, it's just an amazing story of human perseverance - and what it means to be human.