Book Review
Title: Illuminae (The Illuminae Files #1)
Author: Jay Kristoff & Amie Kaufman
Genre: YA/Sci-Fi
Rating: *****
Review: It has been a while since I read this series and been as 2020 is the year I want to re-read all my favourite series and finish the ones I haven’t yet, I thought I’d add the Illuminae Files to the list. While there is an overarching story over the trilogy each book follows separate characters although they do crop up in the other books too. The main characters we are following in Illuminae are Kady and Ezra, who broke up shortly before their home; Kerenza 4 was attacked by the BeiTech corporation. I honestly forgot how much this book punches up in the gut in the opening 50 or so pages, learning about the initial invasion from Kady and Ezra who saw it happen was brilliant and it really throws you into the deep end. However, the Lincoln, the BeiTech forces head ship is now hunting down the small group consisting of the Alexander, a battle ship, science vessel Hypatia and the freighter Copernicus and they are realistically over 6 months away from any support or rescue so their chances of survival are slim.
Both Kady and Ezra are tested for their suitability to conscript and while Ezra is seen as a good candidate for a cyclone pilot, Kady isn’t conscripted because of her attitude towards authority but she does begin working with an underground hacker named Byron Zhang. Only a few weeks into his new flight status Ezra is on a training exercise when AIDEN, the Alexander’s AI calls a red alert and tells the pilots to engage the Copernicus. While they are stunned and horrified when AIDEN blows the ship up, knowing what I know about this series shows that AIDEN did the right thing as there is a deadly pathogen in circulation on the ship which is now going to get transferred to both the Alexander and the Hypatia as they pick up the survivors. Life aboard the Hypatia and the Alexander isn’t easy for Kady or Ezra but Ezra definitely has it harder right now. Kady and Byron are digging into the destruction of the Copernicus and are finding more and more evidence that points towards the Alexander blowing it up and that they are experiencing problems with AIDEN which is why their engines are currently offline, however, Ezra has to witness two of his commanding officers being shot for “disobeying a direct order in a time of war” which really impacts him but he does have a friend in Jimmy. Something causing concern for both Ezra and Kady is the fact that Ezra’s team apparently brought a Class Alpha Zero pathogen aboard the ship which could wipe them all out before they reach jump station Heimdall in a months’ time.
Bryon and Kady manage to access files from the Copernicus with details about the phobos virus that was rampant aboard their ship and they found out that it literally drives people mad and they aren’t shy about killing people. Kady realises what is now being locked in hanger bay 4 and could be set loose aboard the Alexander at any moment, the only thing standing between them and infection are 4 hanger bay doors and they can’t even flush them out the airlock because they have disabled it. Jimmy’s team was called to deal with it and Jimmy was injured in the process, while the injury itself wasn’t serious, his hazmat suit is compromised so he can’t be allowed to leave and he is basically left to die there. This enrages Ezra as Jimmy was the only friend he had in the months that he and Kady didn’t really speak to one another and wants to help him but he is confronted with the harsh reality that there is absolutely nothing they can do to save him. All they can do is survive for him. Seeing what the phobos virus is really doing to people was gruesome but necessary to show how the truth is being kept from them, while this is probably not to cause panic, for people like Kady and Byron this is essentially information that everyone should be entitled to, not just the people in charge.
As we approach the halfway mark in the novel, there is less than two days before the Lincoln catches up with the Alexander and Hypatia and there’s much more going on beneath the surface. We get hints from Kady’s journal that her reasons for helping Byron are a lot more personal than she tells Ezra but when we learn her mother was transferred to the Copernicus and possibly died aboard there when AIDEN destroyed it and her father is on jump station Heimdall which has probably already been taken over but BeiTech and her cousin Asha didn’t make it off Kerenza, this means apart from Ezra she is completely alone and won’t lie to the other worried civilians in order to keep the commands mistakes a secret. However, after the captain of the Hypatia is shot and killed but the Alexander crew sent over to take Byron and another tech we know things are getting very dangerous now especially with the Lincoln breathing down their neck. Ezra isn’t happy Kady lied to him and his friend and another Private are in the hole because she hijacked their accounts but her reasons for doing it are more than justified and she does feel genuinely bad about it but she realises that it needs to be done. With less than a day until the Lincoln catches up with them the relationship between the two ships is tensed and strained but the only ones working towards a possible solution for getting out of the situation alive without having to fight the Lincoln are Kady, Ezra and Byron. Byron comes up with the idea of planting a logic bomb in the Lincoln’s drive system which would crash said systems forcing them to reboot and without an AI it would take a large amount of time giving the Alexander and Hypatia time to make a run for it. However, they need AIDEN to transmit it so they will have to wait until the Lincoln is right on top of them in less than 24 hours and with Ezra’s flight status reinstated he’s going to be in the eye of the storm when it hits, which makes Kady worry but she can’t think about it right now. It is also decided that the Hypatia for now is sticking with the Alexander but acting Captain Syra Boll has announced that if the odds don’t turn in their favour they won’t hesitate to leave the Alexander behind and make a break for it on their own.
As the Lincoln bears down on the limping Alexander, AIDEN is brought back online where it helps Kady and Byron complete their logic bomb and deploy it correctly forcing the Lincoln’s systems to crash buying them precious time. From the files we get from direct inside AIDEN we learn it quickly becomes obsessed with Kady and Ezra’s love for her, however, it also knows if they take it offline again, the Lincoln will catch and destroy them so it needs to prevent them from doing that and the only possible solution for it, is to unleash the infected from Hanger Bay 4 on the command centre on the bridge. With Ezra only two bays away, AIDEN unleashes the infected upon the Alexander. As the virus and death quickly spreads throughout the Alexander, Byron manages to get a message to the Hypatia telling them to make a run for it. Kady who had been a silent witness to Byron’s pleas knows she can’t leave Ezra behind even if it means sacrificing herself, which is exactly what she does when she hijacks a shuttle and makes her way to the Alexander, but she did try to convince Syra Boll first which proved to be disastrously unsuccessful especially after she flushed people out of the airlock when it was suspected they were infected with no evidence to prove this theory. Kady has made it aboard the Alexander with AIDEN watching her although she is unaware of it at this moment and AIDEN is surprised when the first place Kady heads to isn’t to Ezra but to Hanger Bay 4 to see if her mother is still alive. When Kady finds nothing but the echoes of death and madness inside the hanger her grief comes crashing down upon her and the people entity there to bear witness to it is AIDEN. With no one but AIDEN left since she believes her father to be dead as well, Kady is going to be more determined than ever to find him and get him to safety but we are also aware that sooner rather than later the Lincoln is going to breathing down the Alexander’s neck once more.
As we approach the ¾ mark in the novel, Kady finds Jimmy and listens to his last message before he killed himself, rather than losing himself to the virus. Ezra ends up leading her to the core servers where she finds an infected Byron tearing AIDEN apart piece by piece and after he kills himself rather than hurting Kady, AIDEN makes his presence knows to her. AIDEN informs her that the last time Ezra truly spoke to her was before he left to fight the Lincoln and that it has been communicating with her ever since in order for her to kill Byron and repair it so that it can save the fleet. While Kady is furious she does see the logic in AIDEN’s thinking and agrees to help repair it and fight the Lincoln when it catches up with them again less than a day as long as it lets the 1000+ healthy people on board go to the Hypatia. As the virus is still spreading throughout the ship, Kady is having to fight of the infected while trying to keep herself safe and she manages to talk to the one other truly sane person on the ship, Winifred McCall.
As we cross into the final section of the novel, Kady with the help of McCall and others manages to get nearly 700 survivors that are uninfected to the Hypatia before it leaves the Alexander behind. With no one left, Kady stays behind with AIDEN to try and slow down the Lincoln and buy the Hypatia as much time as they can to reach Heimdall and possibly her father if he’s still alive. Kady has to navigate the ship and the infected alone as she attempts to restore AIDEN’s power and defences as the Lincoln bears down on them. As Kady and AIDEN make their final stand, we fully believe that both are going to die here but the ending turns out to just be the beginning of Illuminae’s story. The ending introduces us to the main villain of the series at last although she has been mentioned before; Leanne Forbisher, Ezra’s mother, one of the people who attacked Kerenza, killed thousand and unleashed Phobos Beta upon the fleet. Now they have survived Kady references several incidents we get to see in Gemina and Obsidio so I won’t talk about them. The ending of Illuminae was filled with both dread and hope but knowing what I know about the series I can’t wait to read Gemina again as soon as I can. I highly recommend this series and if you haven’t read it yet definitely pick it up next to the Nevernight series it is one of Jay Kristoff’s best works although I have read the Aurora series yet so I can’t comment on that. Totally earned it 5 stars.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
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