Sunday 12 June 2016

Book Review: Illuminae by Amy Kaufman & Jay Kristoff (Spoiler Free)

5th June to 10th June
Physical Copy


I read this book as part of the Tome Topple read-a-thon, it's been sitting on my shelf for a while and I have attempted it before but I couldn't quite get into it last time.

I really enjoyed this book and there's a lot I could praise about it but to save the review getting too lengthy I shall cut it down to my most favourite aspects. First off, and the probably the thing I enjoyed the most, was the format. The page lay outs and story lay out makes it so much fun to read, it keeps the pace up and keeps you intrigued and interested, I think it is one of the cleverest physical books I have read based on how it's printed alone! I also really loved the I also really enjoyed the characters, sass and sarcasm is so rarely done as well as it is in this book! It was completely refreshing for me personally as I love sarcasm and sassy characters - not just characters who are said to be these things but how they act and what they say never proves this. I liked the plot, I don't tend to read sci-fi but I found this really interesting and it was a lot easier to follow than I thought it was going to be!

I did have a couple of minor gripes which if any of them had been the only issue this book would have been a 5 star but all together I just couldn't justify giving it 5 stars personally. The first issue I had was the romance and love, I didn't like the interactions between the two main protagonists, I found it weak and unrealistic and it felt like it was just filler I really didn't believe them as a couple. I understand that they probably put the romance in because it's YA and that's just what YA authors do but I think if you skipped all the interactions between the two of them you wouldn't have lost anything important. I also disliked the "twist" at the end, I saw it coming from fairly near the beginning and I was hoping for a little more of a reveal than that. Also, contradicting one of my pros a little, I felt all the characters were cardboard cutouts of each other - it is unrealistic to me that every single character (main, side, minor) is sassy all the time - it frustrated me a little. 

The things I disliked weren't so bad that it ruined the reading experience so this was a firm 4 star read!

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