Book Review - Illuminae (The Illuminae Files, #1)

Illuminae by Amie Kaufman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A colleague of mine handed me this book in preparation for an upcoming radio show. I was intrigued by the vague descriptors being thrown around the office - graphic novel-like, illustrated novel, dystopia. Sounded like a book that was up my alley.

Kady Grant and Ezra Mason are two teens who just broke up. They are unconventionally brought back together when their planet is blown up by warring megacorps. The more they try to get to the bottom of what happened the more dirty secrets they unearth. Just how bad things are soon become apparent, but will they be alive to tell the tale? Deadly space viruses, a crazy Hal-Ultron (Haltron?) AI and political machinations of a desperate fleet, there's a lot going on in this book.

This book is unique, to me, at the very least, because its format defies descriptions. It is, at worst, an illustrated novel, at best, a multi-format novel. I love the ambition of it, the sheer artistry of the graphics. The two writers, Kaufman and Kristoff, worked hard to make the world jump off the page. The detail that has gone into this book amazes me. For young adults, this will be an easy hook - gorgeous, pacey, gripping, with teens at the forefront, there's not much they won't like.

For adults, however, this book feels uneven more often than not. At the outset, let me say, this book suffers for being YA. The scale, detail and the world itself, deserved to be in a book for adults. It feels dumbed down to YA level - pushing to the forefront trivialities when war and terror are a very tangible occurrence in today's reality. There's a lot that works in this book, and some stuff which wasn't as successful.

Language: This is an easy read. But even then, I would recommend you read this book in one go, or else it's easy to lose track of who attacked whom, when, where and why. I read it in bits and bobs at first, and honestly found it hard to remember the stakes each time I went back to it.

For the most part the casual style of the book makes it a fun read. There are some fun and funny dialogues and the banter between most of the characters is excellent for the most part. Only a few times did I feel the editing could have been even tighter - but I may be nitpicking.

I don't think the Unipedia entries read as starkly as they should have. They were far too casual, almost matching the tone of the creator of the dossier. It's another nitpick considering how hard it must have been for the writers to find so many voices and tones, but it is a flaw that jumps out at you very early on.

It's evident from the tone of the notes of the dossier that a professional is not making it. I liked this touch, because it made you wonder who it was and why they were doing it.

Pages 182-183 contain the two best pages of hyperrealism I've seen in a long time. Essentially, a desperate leader is asking two of her team members to put together a detailed report in a crazy amount of time - it is fantastic and real and reads exactly like the kind of annoying corporate email a boss would send you on a Thursday (rest of the world: Friday) evening. These are two pages of gold, which I hated because the words felt like they walked out of an actual Outlook inbox.

[I know that the book's editor asked to imbue the AI, Aidan, with more humour and personality, but he reads too much like Ultron because of it. The thing is, this book was written well before Ultron came out, so no one's accusing them of copying the style, but it feels unnecessarily derivative.]

Style: As mentioned, this is a multi-format book, each section has a different, requisite artwork and style. It's a thing of beauty and I can see why it took three years to make it on to the bookshelves.

What bothers me is that the binding let the book down at points. There are pages where the text is eaten by the binding and it ruins the experience. Other pages see the text cut off from the edges - these are readable and to me an interesting stylistic choice, but the binding eating the words was frustrating.

There is a lot of detail - especially in the cross-section of the ships and the routes taken by people near the end of the book. This is a literal graphic novel, but with actual pages of words.

[My favourite are pages 288 and 289. I actually gasped 'Wow' out loud when I saw those pages. Stunning. I would have loved more pages like that.

What confused me were the space routes with messages by Aidan. These were stunning pages, and a designer's nightmare, but they didn't feel like they were in context of anything.

One thing I did love a lot was the Phobos virus. It seems to turn people schizophrenic and there are a couple of pages with crazed writing on it that feels like it's been replicated from some psychologist's reports. It adds to the scary tension of the book. Once we realise the tell-tale cry of 'Don't look at me' is because of the Phobos, there's a legitimate scare factor attached to any encounter with the afflicted. The writers really threw everything at this virus, but it works!]

Romance: It seems to be a prerogative in all novels, especially YA ones, to shoehorn in some romance. In this instance the two protagonists were once romantically involved. Trouble is, by the time we meet them, they've split. Which means the romance is dead. With zero context for the romance - other than the fact that they broke up on the worst day of their lives - we can't get behind all their mushy romantic talk. Seems like every conversation they have begins and ends with 'can't live without you'. Well, as much as we all understand young love, without any actual basis for these feelings, it all feels hollow, tangential to the plot and really annoying. At least there were no stupid love triangles. Let's wait for parts 2 and 3.

Kady, especially, gets the wrong end of the stick because of the romance. Seems like no conversation of hers revolves around anything but Ezra. Everything, every motivation, is fuelled by how much she misses Ezra - sometimes it's also about her mom, but mostly Ezra. It gets tiresome and is a disservice to the character.

Characters: Kady doesn't come alive till the final act. Up till then she spends every waking moment hacking. What she actually finds is inconsequential, because most of her conversations with fellow hacker Zhang devolve into moping about Ezra. Every single one! It becomes tedious. Had the final act not redeemed her I think I would have given up on this book completely. Having said that, I still don't know why the writers waited till then to give her a rounded personality.

Ezra on the other hand - he has personality. He interacts with people, he's a 2nd lieutenant and has to fly. He's scared, he's lonely, he's good but not great. He has a sense of humour. He's an actual person - not a construct. Kady suffers from being the latter and it's frustrating because, it may or may not happen to a male character, but the ladies often suffer from not coming across as human.

She also seems to have no real work on board the Hypatia - or at least none that require her to report to duty or make people aware that she's missing for days at a time. If this book was made into a film or television show - the actor they find to play Kady won't have much to do than stare at a screen for the majority of the running time.

I'm not too pleased with the sleazy way a lot of the characters describe the female characters, especially Kady. I know there's a concerted effort to make it real, but the hyperrealism of objectifying a 17-year-old is not the way to hit the mark. It happens only a handful of times (maybe less) but it doesn't sit well with me - because as always, no one compliments the looks of any of the male characters, but we certainly know what Kady looks like.

[Aside from this, it bothers me that the male characters have action-oriented storylines, but Kady, the sole real female protagonist does not. She's knee-jerk, emotionally reactive. The majority of the first half of the book has her writing pseudo-existential journals after going to group counselling sessions. This while Ezra is going up the military ranks and actively looking for answers. While it pads up the 600 page book (or Illuminae dossier, if that's how you want to look at it) it makes it overlong by not including much active action for so long.

The writers may have known Kady very well, but they didn't show it in the book. The example of Kady's transfer requests is a good yardstick for judging that. It's a surprise twist that Kady's mother, Dr. Grant, was on board the Alexander ship and most likely died during the Phobos outbreak. Most of us probably guessed that she was dead, just not how. Till before that, Kady was attempting to get on board Alexander to be with her mother (not knowing that her mother had barred her transfer to the Alexander, I'm guessing for security reasons) - but in all her requests, all she does is plead to be with her mother and take of her. This is completely the wrong strategy. If Kady was Kyle, he would have started his transfer requests with a list of his skills and how he would benefit the ship and be a valuable member of the team during this time of war (there are dwindling resources on Alexander, especially the human kind) and as a final point, mentioned that as his mother was already on board there was the added benefit of him not needing extra lodging, or whatever. This response is not divided by gender, it is divided by how society views gender. And it's very apparent that the writers couldn't see beyond it. Yes, Kady is just 17, but Ezra and other youngsters on Alexander are conscripted at 18 - most of whom have no military experience or had any military ambition at all.

It's also troubling that there's a not so veiled hint that even the AI, Aidan, seems to have some feelings for Kady. Were Kady a Kyle instead, would Aidan have felt the same way? Would he be as mystified by him and be as protective of him? This weird obsession with sentient non-humans falling for female humans is disturbing. Not saying Aidan actually is in love with Kady, but it's apparent it would have played out differently had Kady been male.]

Diversity: This is a two-pronged response. I love, absolutely love, the plethora of female characters in this book. There are several of them, and it is heartening that even if some of them die, they are are often replaced by other women. It's pretty awesome to read. By the end of the book we have even more female characters in the lead, including a female big bad.

However, it bothers me that while the writers have made a concerted effort to include several characters of different races, the characters with the most page presence read white. For all the Khans who died on the Copernicus, there is a mention of only one Sofia Mohammed, in passing, during the battle against Haltron Aidan. Of the other significant characters, only Ann Chau and Byron Zhang are ethnic - all others read white. I can hope that Ezra is not, or that Winifred McCall may not be, but I bet they are.

Not sure why either or both of the protagonists couldn't obviously be POC, or why more of the main supporting cast couldn't be thus.

My other major grouse is that none of the characters in the book are LGBTQ+. Only one character, right at the end, who appears for a couple of pages is gay. Not a single other person is even on the scale. I was expecting any number of them to be on the scale, but no luck. Dorian could have had a boyfriend, Syra could be trans, Winifred could be bi - nope, nada, nothing. It's like the writers forgot all about this, and then remembered to shoehorn a token mention of LGBTQ+ late into the book. Can it improve from book 2 onwards - one can only hope. But it was a real bother in this one.

Had it been written for an adult audience, I think this book would have been spectacular. The silly romantic diversions are just those - inconsequential and baseless. It feels hollow to the core.

[And worse, it leads to an unlikely happy ending, which detracts from the build up of the book. Why did Ezra and Kady both have to survive? Must we assume that teenaged lovers will be together forever - reality doesn't work like that.]

Despite the many negatives that often detracted from the overall narrative, this book is a remarkable feat. The dossier files, the binary coding, the ship blueprints, the timelines, numbers, etc. show the dedication that went into this book. It's all fantastic. Despite it being very derivative, it never falls short of being innovative. To scratch your Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica itches, you need to pick up this book.

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