Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff - HOLY SH*T

I don't normally read sci-fi/dystopian fiction — not because of any misguided superiority complex, but simply because my heart is more naturally drawn to quieter narratives that center around character rather than plot.

After reading a few interviews with Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff about Illuminae, however, I knew that I had to give it a try. And my goodness, am I glad that I did. I'm really shocked I haven't been seeing more people talk about this now that it's out!

To catch up anyone who isn't familiar with the premise, here's the book jacket copy from Amazon:

This morning, Kady thought breaking up with Ezra was the hardest thing she’d have to do. This afternoon, her planet was invaded.

The year is 2575, and two rival megacorporations are at war over a planet that’s little more than a speck at the edge of the universe. Now with enemy fire raining down on them, Kady and Ezra—who are barely even talking to each other—are forced to evacuate with a hostile warship in hot pursuit.

But their problems are just getting started. A plague has broken out and is mutating with terrifying results; the fleet’s AI may actually be their enemy; and nobody in charge will say what’s really going on. As Kady hacks into a web of data to find the truth, it’s clear the only person who can help her is the ex-boyfriend she swore she’d never speak to again.

Told through a fascinating dossier of hacked documents—including emails, maps, files, IMs, medical reports, interviews, and more—Illuminae is the first book in a heart-stopping trilogy about lives interrupted, the price of truth, and the courage of everyday heroes.

First, the format of the book is absolutely brilliant, and I can't begin to imagine all of the work and creativity that went into conceiving it, let alone executing it. Everything feels authentic and helps draw the reader into the world of the book — and they way the AI is portrayed is so smart and consuming. This helped make the sci-fi aspects feel really accessible; being privy to "classified" documents is a sure-fire way to make kick my nosiness into high gear and keep me reading.

The other thing, and possibly most important thing, that made this book feel so accessible to someone who doesn't normally read sci-fi is that the main characters — Kady and Ezra — are such teenagers in the most endearing, frustrating, and compelling way. This may be true of most sci-fi/dystopian YA, but it seemed especially singular here. Everything that was happening to them was secondary to the fact that they were just teenagers trying to live their lives and make the best of the circumstances they were dealt: they were teenagers who happened to be dealing with espionage, not agents who happened to be teenagers. The entire way I cheered them on and felt their hopes, their grief, their fears.

Kady and Ezra weren't the only incredible characters. Almost every character who made it onto the page — and there were many — felt like a real, flesh-and-blood, breathing person, which instinctively made me care. Even the AI became a beautiful character, which is something I never expected to feel or say.

Another of the book's strengths is that it did NOT hold back. With anything. There were so many times that I had to sit and stare at the page because I couldn't believe that what just happened had actually happened. One of my favorite things about the book is the way it played up on my fear of "what would it look like to be moving closer to inevitable disaster and tragedy, but to still have to keep fighting because there's no other option." Towards the end, I was actually saying oh my God out loud. There may have been audible gasps.

Which brings me to the twists. THE TWISTS. Totally not gimmicky, the twists came hard on multiple levels throughout the book, keeping the tension and momentum going throughout the entire 599 pages. You'll just have to read for yourself to find out what these mind-blowing twists are.

The only negative I can say about Illuminae is that I didn't know it was the first of a series when I bought it and started reading it — and now I have to wait for the next to come out! What a problem to have.

Thank you Jay and Aimee for bringing such a crazy, brilliant thing into the world.

Other books I've written about:

Fans of the Impossible Life
Glory O'Brien's History of the Future

More Happy Than Not 

Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda

You can also find me on Twitter @HallockMarie. Come follow me there, we can talk about books! 

Kate Scelsa's FANS OF THE IMPOSSIBLE LIFE - The Magic I Wish I Had As A Teenager

 When I first saw a post about Fans of the Impossible Life by Kate Scelsa, I felt like the book was written for me. I waited months to read it - and now that I finally did, I am not disappointed.

I'm not a fast reader, and lately I've been having trouble reading more than a few pages at a time. With Fans, I would sit down to read a few pages of this book and suddenly be 30, 40, 50 pages from where I started - a true testament to the success of the book's pacing. I even stayed after work to finish reading the last 40 pages, despite knowing I'd end up sitting in extra traffic and being late for an appointment.

To catch up anyone who isn't familiar with the plot, here's the summary from Amazon:

Mira is starting over at Saint Francis Prep. She promised her parents she would at least try to pretend that she could act like a functioning human this time, not a girl who can’t get out of bed for days on end, who only feels awake when she’s with Sebby.

Jeremy is the painfully shy art nerd at Saint Francis who’s been in self-imposed isolation after an incident that ruined his last year of school. When he sees Sebby for the first time across the school lawn, it’s as if he’s been expecting this blond, lanky boy with mischief glinting in his eye.

Sebby, Mira’s gay best friend, is a boy who seems to carry sunlight around with him. Even as life in his foster home starts to take its toll, Sebby and Mira together craft a world of magic rituals and impromptu road trips, designed to fix the broken parts of their lives.

As Jeremy finds himself drawn into Sebby and Mira’s world, he begins to understand the secrets that they hide in order to protect themselves, to keep each other safe from those who don’t understand their quest to live for the impossible.

This is a truly character driven novel in the best possible way. When I first heard that the three different characters would be narrated in first (Jeremy), second (Sebby), and third (Mira) person POV, I was skeptical. It seemed like a lot, but it totally worked. 

Sebby's 2nd person POV was perfect, because it allowed the reader to really approach Seby's darkness in a way that wasn't too overwhelming, and also showcases Sebby's own trauma and distancing from himself and his experiences. Jeremy's 1st person POV feels the most intimate and vulnerable, and I think ultimately he is - while he had a terrible experience with bullying, it doesn't seem like he's as acquainted with inner darkness the way Sebby and Mira are, and it can be difficult to plunge into that world when you're not used to it. And Mira's 3rd person POV creates a similar distance to Sebby's, but one that's much more subdued, in a way that reflects her depression.

Through these characters, Scelsa constructs a world that showcases the dark, the breathless, and the mundane that's so prevalent in teenage life. And let me tell you - this novel does not back down at all, with anything (THAT PARTY SCENE). While at first some of the characters' behavior felt shocking, it didn't feel like it was for shock value at all, but rather a natural extension of the circumstances the characters were dealing with.

In that same vein, I thought Fans of the Impossible Life beautifully balanced how people who are not in a healthy place can be viewed very romantically and act out with romantic gestures - Sebby and Mira's "spells" to banish or conjure as a way of coping - while never romanticizing the mental illness or destructive behaviors themselves.

This book was a stunning exploration of the dark, twisty, incredible turns that friendships can take, especially when they're so much more than friendship but not quite anything else, either, in a way that felt very true to my own high school experiences.

When I was in a class over Labor Day weekend, the instructor asked us what our "stuff" is, the thing that we gravitate towards in the things we create and the art we engage with. My answer was "the bonds people create when they've reached rock bottom," and I feel like that is what this book is at it's core, at least for me.

It's a rare, special thing when you find a piece of your soul out there in the world, created by someone else, and this book is very, very special.

***

Other books I've written about:
Glory O'Brien's History of the Future

More Happy Than Not 

Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda

You can also find me on Twitter @HallockMarie. Come follow me there, we can talk about books!

A.S. King's GLORY O'BRIEN'S HISTORY OF THE FUTURE

I finished reading Glory O'Brien's History of the Future by A.S. King this morning, and...have no idea how I feel about it. One of the things I've been challenging myself with lately is to not say something is bad when really I just don't like it, and that certainly applies to this: it is a good book. It does a lot of things and for the most part, it does them well.

As a general disclaimer, this is not the type of book I usually read. I'm very much a realistic contemporary girl, and this is...not that. But I'm trying to push myself out of my reading comfort zone, and ultimately, I'm really glad I did with this! To give some context, here is the summary from Amazon:

Graduating from high school is a time of limitless possibilities--but not for Glory, who has no plan for what's next. Her mother committed suicide when Glory was only four years old, and she's never stopped wondering if she will eventually go the same way...until a transformative night when she begins to experience an astonishing new power to see a person's infinite past and future. From ancient ancestors to many generations forward, Glory is bombarded with visions--and what she sees ahead of her is terrifying: A tyrannical new leader raises an army. Women's rights disappear. A violent second civil war breaks out. And young girls vanish daily, sold off or interned in camps. Glory makes it her mission to record everything she sees, hoping her notes will somehow make a difference. She may not see a future for herself, but she'll do anything to make sure this one doesn't come to pass.

Amazon also describes this book as a "masterpiece about freedom, feminism, and destiny," and I would generally agree with that. Those aspects of the story were by far my favorites, although at times I felt like the feminism from Glory's POV (by which I mean some feminist statements that came up in her internal narration) were a little heavy handed and didactic.

Part of my conflict with this is that I'm not even sure if I think that's a bad thing, because I think it's great that these messages of independence and agency are being exposed to teens. At the same time, I felt that those moments sometimes pulled me out of the story because they didn't sound like a seventeen year old. One thing that does save it a little bit, though, is that it seems like as much as she does believe those feminist ideals, they're on some level just repeated, because she seems to have some very judgmental thoughts about her friend Ellie's sexuality that doesn't quite line up with the brand of feminism she's preaching (which I actually liked because it made Glory seem more realistic).

Within the vein of Glory being realistic - and before I go into what I loved about the novel - I want to talk briefly about Glory's voice. I personally did not buy into Glory's voice until probably about 2/3 of the way into the novel. To me, she seemed edgy and quirky in a very deliberate way; she felt very written. This might just be because she's so outside of the realm of how I think/how my friends think, and I wasn't able to relate to this as much. It could be that she put on that affect as a protective wall as a result of the trauma she experienced at a young age. Whatever it was, it wasn't my personal cup of tea.

There were, however, moments that I loved Glory's voice, and those moments were primarily where her humor or blunt perspective came through. For example, on page 37:

"Did you know nearly every serial killer in history had a porn addiction? Helped them dehumanize people so they could kill them," she [Ellie] said.
"You didn't learn that at homeschool."
"Rick told me. He's got all these books about serial killers."
"Wow. That's not creepy at all."
"Stop it."
"Okay," I said, but I still thought it was creepy.

Another thing I loved was Glory's friendship with Ellie. I think friendships in high school are some of the most intense - for better or worse - that people will have in their lives, ever. There's just something about being stuck with the same people and bonding out of necessity, the misery that is high school, and sometimes genuine, profound bonds. Sometimes there's a little bit of all of those things in high school friendships. Glory and Ellie have a little bit of all of those things and so much more, and the back and forth that Glory goes through between not wanting to be around Ellie and being around Ellie because it's so habitual and wanting to push Ellie away but never quite getting to the point of actually pushing her away - it's all just so genuine.

The other thing I loved about the book was the visions, or transmissions, as Glory calls them. Some of these are about people's pasts and ancestors, but primarily they are visions of the future, and eventually they start being compiled into short "Glory O'Brien's History of the Future" sections. These were my favorite parts of the book. It was these sections that kept me thinking about the book when I wasn't reading it, particularly after I watched the first GOP debate leading up to the 2016 elections. After that, the History of the Future sections had a little bit more of underlying panic and heaviness. The only thing I wish is that there had been more of them. I found myself rushing through Glory's narration to get to the History of the Future sections, and I got the sense that there was a lot more than Glory knew about that wasn't actually imparted to the reader, and I wish it had been (although for a YA novel, I guess it could have gotten too dark if it had gone into too much more detail).

Overall, I'm very conflicted about Glory O'Brien's History of the Future. Mostly, I think it's just not my type of book, but I'm also really glad that I read it. And even just for the History of the Future sections, I think it's an important read. I know that it will definitely stick with me long after I put it back on the shelf, which to me is the mark of an author's job well done.

Other books I've written about:

More Happy Than Not 

Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda

You can also find me on Twitter @HallockMarie. Come follow me there, we can talk about books!