Second of four-part BOB blog: 'Illuminae': Illuminating a new form of storytelling

     

BOB Note: Illuminae was touted during the recent BookExpo America as being one of the hot Young Adult novels of the fall. Editors at Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House in New York City, said they were excited about the creative way that the two Australian writers tell the story. The editors promote it as being in the same style as Marie Lu and James Dashner. Lu has endorsed it by writing "Brace yourself. You're about to be immersed in a mindscape that you'll never want to leave." We at Best of Books decided to put it to the ultimate test and let one of the BOB's best readers read and review an advance copy of the book. Mikaleh Offerman is an incoming freshman at Oklahoma Baptist University and an avid reader. We greatly appreciate that she wrote the following review and are impressed in how she wrote, too! (She even wrote the headline!)

 

Mikaleh Offerman

By MIKALEH OFFERMAN

 

     Kady and Ezra are not exactly on speaking terms when their ice planet is invaded. In fact, they’ve just finished breaking up when the time comes to escape through the exploding mass that used to be their home. When they reach safety on separate evacuating space ships, their fight still isn't over. However, a plague has infested one of the escaping ships, an advanced intelligence computer has gone haywire, and the only people Ezra and Kady have left are each other. 

 

            Calling Illuminae a book would be like calling the Atlantic Ocean a glass of water.

  

               Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff have created a new breed of storytelling, and it’s amazing. Illuminae is an intricate tale that reveals itself through a compilation of hacked emails, classified documents, IMs, and other strangely poetic methods.

               Normally, I would have struggled to conjure any form of interest in a book like this. I would have taken a look at it, admired the cover a little, opened it up to see if I liked the inside, and then slammed it right back onto the shelf. Classified documents? A couple of emails? Pfft. Give me a real novel. Something that I can sit down and absorb instead of sort through like a wannabe police investigator.

                However, these emails, reports, documents, and IMs reveal a cast of characters that turn the wannabe investigator into an addicted reader.

                No dialogue tags or single-voice narrator?

                Nope. Illuminae has no need for those storytelling devices.

                Yet, while Illuminae is vastly different from typical novels, it carries many of the same elements because it uses the written word to tell a story. It has extremely relatable characters that kept me turning the pages and even flipping back a couple to re-read those emails exchanged by So-and-So and What’s-His-Name because Oh my gosh, everything makes so much sense now! One minute I was laughing and the next I was fighting tears. In the end, I was shaking my head in awe because I couldn’t believe that I’d just finished reading almost six hundred pages in one sitting.

                You can’t judge a book by its cover, and you certainly can’t judge a story by the method that it’s told. Illuminae proves this point to infinity and beyond.