Review: Illuminae

Reading Illuminae is like jumping into a Sci-Fi movie. It's like no book I've seen before. Instead of chapters, there are interview transcripts, staff memos, diary entries, emails, internal maps of space carriers, and text set out in such a way, it becomes illustrations. Illuminae turns page layout into an art form. But whether you like the formatting or not, don't stop reading. This ride is action packed.

Kady and Ezra's love life is already in ruins when a mega-corporation drops a biological bomb on their remote planet.
They are thrown together in the fight for survival then separated when the entire population evacuates the planet.

With a battleship intent on destroying all fleeing survivors, virus sufferers whose only desire is to kill and an artificial intelligence that turns on those it is meant to protect, enemies are everywhere.

Not only does the action keep spiking, each main character and even a few minor ones feel three dimensional through their conversational quirks. No wonder Brad Pitt optioned the movie rights for Illuminae within weeks of the book's publication.

The only difficulty I had was that I couldn't wait to devour the sequel immediately after.

Title: Illuminae
Author: Amy Kaufman and Jay Kristoff
Publisher: Allen & Unwin, $16.99
Publication Date: 1 November 2015
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9781760113803
For ages: 13+
Type: Young Adult