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Publisher: Knopf
Genre: YA Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Pages: 600+ per book
Format: Hardcover (library)
What It’s About: (To be honest, I went into these books literally only knowing that they were set in space in the future. That’s it. I definitely think it’s better that way for these books, but I’ll try to give a BRIEF hook here.) After an attack on an illegal mining operation on the planet they call home, Kady Grant and Ezra Mason become refugees trying to escape through a space jump station before their attackers catch them. On the way, they have to battle everything from the other colony members who escaped to an AI that is too smart for everyone’s good. While each installment has a self-sufficient storyline within it, there is a bigger overarching story that runs throughout.
So here’s the thing. I do not enjoy reading (or even thinking) about space. I have a lot of space-related anxiety, and if I’m not careful, the idea of space gives me panic attacks.
But I read all three of these books. And I loved all three of these books.
Here’s the story. I first heard of these books in late 2016 when Regan of PeruseProject on YouTube first read them and talked about them on her channel. She reads a lot of sci-fi/fantasy that I generally do not feel tempted to pick up. I don’t have a clear memory—I guess I could go watch the videos again but…no thanks—but they didn’t sound interesting to me at the time. I knew they were super hyped in the BookTube world, but she didn’t quite sell them to me.
So I knew about them for a good couple of years before Kayla of booksandlala finally read it in October 2019 for her Five Star Predictions video. I trust Kayla’s bookish opinions a lot, so when she gave Illuminae five stars AND showed some of the format, I knew I had to give them a try.
As captivating as the plot of these books is, the thing that really dragged me in was the format. They’re set up as a file of documents being submitted as evidence in a trial. There are chat logs and memos and video transcriptions and other documents. When you add that to the high-intensity plot, these books absolutely fly by, and they’re really hard to put down. For the most part, the sections (where the story is being told in one format, i.e. chat logs) are just a couple of pages long. I kept saying to myself, “Okay, I’ll read one more section. Okay, one more section. Just one more section and then I’ll go to bed.” And then it would be 3AM and I’d be finishing up the book. Don’t be intimidated by the page length!
Now, these books are marketed as Young Adult. But I feel like that distinction was made pretty arbitrarily. I haven’t read either of the authors’ other works, so I can’t compare these to what they usually write, but these books are definitely good crossovers. In terms of things like war, death, and gruesome biological attacks, these books are pretty dark. The characters have to struggle with killing other people and making the ultimate sacrifice. I would generally qualify those as pretty “adult” dilemmas—though of course I would absolutely say that it’s good to introduce young adults to these topics too. There are two main attempts made at keeping these books PG-13 (in my opinion): there are only understated references to sex, and all the swearing is blocked out (present, but covered in black bars).
While I appreciate that the blocking of the swearing was thematically appropriate (official documents and whatnot), it actually got really annoying by the end of the first book. I just wanted them to say the swear words instead of having me guess what they were. It was almost distracting, because inserting different words would make the nuance of the sentence so different. And there were times when I really wasn’t sure what the word was until I finished the rest of the sentence—especially when the missing word was the active verb in the sentence. I almost wish these books had been listed as Adult so that they could just write the swear words, but I understand that they reach a wider audience of young adults and adults by marketing them as YA. And this swearing complaint of mine is definitely small in the long run.
The books all follow teenagers, which also makes it clear why they would be marketed as YA. Each book centers on two different young adults in each setting. They were all interesting, well-developed characters with relatable problems and flaws. But they’re also clearly identifiable and it was easy to tell apart the characters in each book. And they are all fun to read about!
And finally, the plot. The authors did an excellent job of writing books that had both stand-alone plots and an overarching story line that connected all three installments. You absolutely need to read them in order (Illuminae, Gemina, Obsidio) to understand the greater conspiracy that caused the events in each of the three novels, but they each have full plot lines that are contained within each installment. There are cliffhangers for the overarching story, but you are never left hanging in the middle of a crucial individual plot moment for the plot of each book. I hope that makes sense. I really appreciated it because it always feels like a bogus attempt to make more money when a single installment in a series doesn’t have a self-contained plot.
Overall, I loved these books. I would absolutely recommend them to anyone, young adult or adult, sci-fi lover or never picked up a space book in their life.
