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The Illuminae Files #1-3
The Illuminae Files, #1-3
Illuminae Files Series Collection 3 Books Set By Jay Kristoff, Amie Kaufman:
Illuminae:
The year is 2575 and two mega-corporations are at war over a planet that s little more than an ice covered speck. Too bad nobody thought to warn the people living on it. With enemy fire raining down on them Ezra and Kady have to make their escape on the evacuating fleet. But their troubles are just beginning. A deadly plague has broken out on one of the space ships and it is mutating with terrifying results. Their ships protection is seriously flawed. No one will say what is going on.
Gemina:
Hanna Donnelly is the station captain's pampered daughter and Nik Malikov is the reluctant member of a notorious crime family. Together they struggle with the realities of life aboard the galaxy s most boring space station, blissfully unaware that Kady Grant and the Hypatia are headed right toward Heimdall with news of the Kerenza invasion. Picking up about five minutes after Illuminae ends, Gemina is the electrifying sequel to the hottest YA novel of 2015.
Obsidio:
Grant came to Kerenza to escape her past. Too bad he just caught up with her. Asha survived BeiTech's initial assault and has been working undercover with the hopelessly outmatched resistance ever since. The last thing she expected to worry about was her ex-boyfriend, Rhys Lindstrom who just landed planetside. Is he her way out - or guarantee she never gets off this frozen rock alive?
Illuminae:
The year is 2575 and two mega-corporations are at war over a planet that s little more than an ice covered speck. Too bad nobody thought to warn the people living on it. With enemy fire raining down on them Ezra and Kady have to make their escape on the evacuating fleet. But their troubles are just beginning. A deadly plague has broken out on one of the space ships and it is mutating with terrifying results. Their ships protection is seriously flawed. No one will say what is going on.
Gemina:
Hanna Donnelly is the station captain's pampered daughter and Nik Malikov is the reluctant member of a notorious crime family. Together they struggle with the realities of life aboard the galaxy s most boring space station, blissfully unaware that Kady Grant and the Hypatia are headed right toward Heimdall with news of the Kerenza invasion. Picking up about five minutes after Illuminae ends, Gemina is the electrifying sequel to the hottest YA novel of 2015.
Obsidio:
Grant came to Kerenza to escape her past. Too bad he just caught up with her. Asha survived BeiTech's initial assault and has been working undercover with the hopelessly outmatched resistance ever since. The last thing she expected to worry about was her ex-boyfriend, Rhys Lindstrom who just landed planetside. Is he her way out - or guarantee she never gets off this frozen rock alive?
Paperback
About the author
Amie Kaufman
33 books13.1k followersAmie Kaufman is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of young adult fiction. Her multi-award winning work is slated for publication in over 30 countries, and is in development for film and TV. Raised in Australia and occasionally Ireland, Amie has degrees in history, literature, law and conflict resolution. She lives in Melbourne with her husband and daughter, their rescue dog, and an extremely large personal library. She is the host of the podcasts Amie Kaufman on Writing, and Pub Dates.
You can sign up for her newsletter to see what she's working on, hear when she releases a new book, and be automatically entered for giveaways: https://amiekaufman.substack.com/
You can sign up for her newsletter to see what she's working on, hear when she releases a new book, and be automatically entered for giveaways: https://amiekaufman.substack.com/
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
January 26, 2022
LOVE THE TRILOGY
October 12, 2021
hi, recently-ish learned of Jay Kristoff’s racism and misogyny towards asian women, & women alike. im not sure about Amie but, many woc are upset and disturbed at Jay’s actions.
this is one of my favorite sci-fi series, so buy 2nd hand!
this is one of my favorite sci-fi series, so buy 2nd hand!
June 2, 2024
Do yourself a favour and listen to the full cast audiobooks.
August 5, 2020
Reading experience.
•
The hype is real, everyone. After loving the first two books in the Aurora Cycle, I thought I would try this trilogy that I had been seeing everywhere on bookstagram. The Illuminae Files did not disappoint. I never thought I was much of a sci-fi lover, but Jay Kristoff and Amie Kaufman have proved me wrong with every page they write.
•
Written in an interactive style, I loved the drawings, spacecraft plans, chat conversations, and AIDAN, the possessive and obsessive artificial intelligence. These books are part 2001, part Die Hard, and all plucky heart. If you haven’t experienced this trilogy, I urge you to pick them up. I think I may be a sci-fi fan after all.
•
What is your favorite space film?
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Clean rating: 🧼🧼🧼 for so much sexually charged banter and innuendo. Plus, some bonus kisses.
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•
The hype is real, everyone. After loving the first two books in the Aurora Cycle, I thought I would try this trilogy that I had been seeing everywhere on bookstagram. The Illuminae Files did not disappoint. I never thought I was much of a sci-fi lover, but Jay Kristoff and Amie Kaufman have proved me wrong with every page they write.
•
Written in an interactive style, I loved the drawings, spacecraft plans, chat conversations, and AIDAN, the possessive and obsessive artificial intelligence. These books are part 2001, part Die Hard, and all plucky heart. If you haven’t experienced this trilogy, I urge you to pick them up. I think I may be a sci-fi fan after all.
•
What is your favorite space film?
•
Clean rating: 🧼🧼🧼 for so much sexually charged banter and innuendo. Plus, some bonus kisses.
•
April 28, 2024
This book made me think about how good and bad is all about your perspective. This mainly comes into play throughout the books around the Alexander ship AI, AIDEN. AIDEN is programmed to act in the passenger and crews best interest, but over the books you can see it develops from a computer program into more of a true artificial intelligence- able to make decisions and act on its own. While it still acts in ways it believes are for the greater good, AIDEN often makes those choices of killing the few to save the many– destroying an infected freighter, blowing up the nearly-empty Alexander in the middle of a battlefield to allow the Hypatia to escape, flooding two levels of an overpopulated dreadnought with carbon dioxide so that the food, water and oxygen didn’t run out, etc– which gets it shut down multiple times. However, AIDEN, being an impartial AI, is fully aware of the impacts. It knows that it will be viewed as the villain. It knows these people have lives and stories of their own. It knows its actions are monstrous, and yet it still cuts off the oxygen, still releases the virus, still traps the people, all for its so-called “greater good”. Some data from its system shows this quote at the end of the story- “I know very little else, save perhaps this- that every story needs its monster. And that everybody deserves a second chance. And that I. Am. AIDAN." This sums up many of the phrases from over the course of the books that it picked up around significant moments and shaped its mindset. I found this book engrossing, deceptive at times, and overall insightful into this sort of philosophy, and it really shows how you can never have good without a bit of bad. Every light casts a shadow somewhere, even if it is not obvious on the surface. Overall incredible book.
February 27, 2023
Sono stata felicissima di aver letto questa saga, pur essendo adatta ad un pubblico giovanissimo (Young adult), l'ho letteralmente divorata!
Il motivo del mio entusiasmo non è stato tanto dettato dalla trama, che ad una vecchia e incallita lettrice come me non risulta particolarmente originale, quanto piuttosto dall'impostazione tipografica delle pagine. Sto attraversando una fase della mia vita in cui sono attratta e alla continua ricerca di libri "strani", fuori dal normale e dalla consuetudine, sia come storia narrata ma anche e sopratutto come grafica e questa trilogia mi ha, appunto, conquistata. Non voglio scendere in particolari per non rovinare la sorpresa di chi vuole cimentarsi in questa lettura che risulta piuttosto "interattiva", se così vogliamo dire, nuova, piacevolissima e che riserva ad ogni pagina nuove scoperte.
Altra cosa per me molto interessante è stata anche la struttura di questa storia che mi ha immediatamente richiamato alla mente la struttura dei tre poemi epici classici: il viaggio in Illuminae che ricorda il viaggio di Ulisse (la nave spaziale attraverso il buio del cosmo, la nave di Ulisse attraverso il blu del Mediterraneo); la guerra in Gemina è la guerra di Troia nell'Iliade; il viaggio e la guerra riassunte in Obsidio che rimandano al viaggio di Enea e alla sua guerra contro i Turni del Lazio.
Infine, ma non meno importante, fa riflettere il ruolo della IA, la sua evoluzione verso un inizio di coscienza che mi ha abbastanza inquietato, perché mostra quello che una IA può fare e diventare, soprattutto in questo periodo storico, in cui sta venendo sempre più alla luce l'uso di IA nella nostra vita quotidiana e che molto più presto di quanto possiamo prevedere andrà a sostituirsi a noi uomini in molti settori lavorativi e non solo, se non la si saprà gestire bene (come stanno già dimostrando gli effetti negativi sull'apprendimento a causa dell'uso indiscriminato di ChatGPT fra gli studenti statunitensi).
Il motivo del mio entusiasmo non è stato tanto dettato dalla trama, che ad una vecchia e incallita lettrice come me non risulta particolarmente originale, quanto piuttosto dall'impostazione tipografica delle pagine. Sto attraversando una fase della mia vita in cui sono attratta e alla continua ricerca di libri "strani", fuori dal normale e dalla consuetudine, sia come storia narrata ma anche e sopratutto come grafica e questa trilogia mi ha, appunto, conquistata. Non voglio scendere in particolari per non rovinare la sorpresa di chi vuole cimentarsi in questa lettura che risulta piuttosto "interattiva", se così vogliamo dire, nuova, piacevolissima e che riserva ad ogni pagina nuove scoperte.
Altra cosa per me molto interessante è stata anche la struttura di questa storia che mi ha immediatamente richiamato alla mente la struttura dei tre poemi epici classici: il viaggio in Illuminae che ricorda il viaggio di Ulisse (la nave spaziale attraverso il buio del cosmo, la nave di Ulisse attraverso il blu del Mediterraneo); la guerra in Gemina è la guerra di Troia nell'Iliade; il viaggio e la guerra riassunte in Obsidio che rimandano al viaggio di Enea e alla sua guerra contro i Turni del Lazio.
Infine, ma non meno importante, fa riflettere il ruolo della IA, la sua evoluzione verso un inizio di coscienza che mi ha abbastanza inquietato, perché mostra quello che una IA può fare e diventare, soprattutto in questo periodo storico, in cui sta venendo sempre più alla luce l'uso di IA nella nostra vita quotidiana e che molto più presto di quanto possiamo prevedere andrà a sostituirsi a noi uomini in molti settori lavorativi e non solo, se non la si saprà gestire bene (come stanno già dimostrando gli effetti negativi sull'apprendimento a causa dell'uso indiscriminato di ChatGPT fra gli studenti statunitensi).
December 11, 2022
Initial review of the first book:
Well, the super aggravating format of the early bits gets better. It goes to largely “IM chats” and “transcriptions of security footage,” which are not too far from a regular narrative and thus on the more readable side. Then it evolves into mainly the perspective of the AI, which while the voice is on the ‘special’ side is even more like a regular narrative, aside from the pretty nifty pictures.
So I suppose in the end I applaud the ambition of the format. But one could argue that the format is the only notable element of the book; it makes me wonder what some good writers could do if they were to play around with it. The plot is a mash-up of, like, 2001, a zombie novel, and a typical YA sci-fi, without really adding anything new.
Character-wise, well, I somewhat care about some of the characters as they do have plenty of dialogue (and/or the IM approximation of it). But too much of it is from obvious emotional manipulation for the sake of it; I’m not a fan of that.
The romance is kinda dumb but it’s not instalove, so there’s that. The villain ‘reveal’ or whatever is pretty obvious, though I will admitt that it makes me somewhat curious about the fallout in the forthcoming sequels. Not enough to read them though. At least I can mark Jay Kristoff off my checklist of recent authors to get around to.
After finishing the series: Well, my mind is pretty much the same as before. My favorite character is the killer AI, and the stakes feel ultimately not super high given how everything ends. But, mmm, interesting formatting still.
Well, the super aggravating format of the early bits gets better. It goes to largely “IM chats” and “transcriptions of security footage,” which are not too far from a regular narrative and thus on the more readable side. Then it evolves into mainly the perspective of the AI, which while the voice is on the ‘special’ side is even more like a regular narrative, aside from the pretty nifty pictures.
So I suppose in the end I applaud the ambition of the format. But one could argue that the format is the only notable element of the book; it makes me wonder what some good writers could do if they were to play around with it. The plot is a mash-up of, like, 2001, a zombie novel, and a typical YA sci-fi, without really adding anything new.
Character-wise, well, I somewhat care about some of the characters as they do have plenty of dialogue (and/or the IM approximation of it). But too much of it is from obvious emotional manipulation for the sake of it; I’m not a fan of that.
The romance is kinda dumb but it’s not instalove, so there’s that. The villain ‘reveal’ or whatever is pretty obvious, though I will admitt that it makes me somewhat curious about the fallout in the forthcoming sequels. Not enough to read them though. At least I can mark Jay Kristoff off my checklist of recent authors to get around to.
After finishing the series: Well, my mind is pretty much the same as before. My favorite character is the killer AI, and the stakes feel ultimately not super high given how everything ends. But, mmm, interesting formatting still.
July 16, 2020
This is one of the best book series I have read in my life, the story is so addicting it makes drugs look like a joke besides it, the writing style is breath taking and the plottwists are so unexpected you need to take a moment.
I can’t express in words how much I adore this series...
My only problem with this is, that there are no gay couples/ just a few people of color.
We are living in the 21 th century, but there is no lgbtq+ representation and there’s a big lack of people of color. That is very questionable.
The story deserves 5 stars,
But for already named reasons I can’t rate it with that.
I can’t express in words how much I adore this series...
My only problem with this is, that there are no gay couples/ just a few people of color.
We are living in the 21 th century, but there is no lgbtq+ representation and there’s a big lack of people of color. That is very questionable.
The story deserves 5 stars,
But for already named reasons I can’t rate it with that.
January 1, 2021
This series was incredibly creative and well done. I highly recommend leafing through the books, which present as case files with interview transcripts, torn notes, diagrams, surveillance transcripts, and drawings, while listening to the audiobook, which includes a full cast and cool sound effects. While it took me about 100 or so pages to get into the first book, I couldn’t put it down after that. I binged all 3 books in a few days. I thoroughly enjoyed this series and will definitely listen/read again.
January 14, 2021
All I can say is wow. I ordinarily read on my kindle, but I bought these as hardcovers. This is the most fun and interesting storytelling I've ever encountered. Amie and Jay and creative in ways I didn't know possible. I loved the story, I loved the characters, and I loved that I couldn't put this series down until it was done. Kady, Ezra, AIDAN, Nik, Hannah, Rhys, Asha and Ella were all such likeable characters that you were biting your nails hoping they'd succeed I each of their daring quests.
June 9, 2020
There’s nothing they don’t have- space, illegal mining, big business corporation trying to murder everyone and cover it up, a murdering for the greater good AI, hacking, romance, MOAR hacking, cat and mouse military tactics, parent death- oh god so much of that! Why Jay & Amie, why? I’ve never read anything like them and their equal will be hard to find! .
What did you guys think? Did you love them as much as I did? Who’s your favourite character?
What did you guys think? Did you love them as much as I did? Who’s your favourite character?
July 29, 2023
The First Two had won my Heart. In the First the couple touched me so much, I have ready every single day with the desire to know what's next. The second One was my also my love because of the multiverse. The third One was a Little delusion because there Is nothing new in the story, the only thing I liked was that all characters were together. But among all the One that has become my favorite Is the AI Aidan
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 17, 2021
I cannot stress this enough- these books are AMAZING. I will recommend these books to anyone who knows how to read. I recommended these books to all of my friends, even the ones who don't read and they all couldn't put them down once they started them. I reread these books over and over because I can't get over how amazing they are. Please read them, you won't regret it.
June 21, 2023
SO. FUCKING. GOOD. ARE YOU KIDDING ME. EVERYONE DROP WHAT YOU ARE DOING AND READ THIS NOW. ONE OF THE MOST INSANE AND AMAZING STORIES EVER. I WAS EMOTIONALLY DRAINED AFTER READING THIS BECAUSE I WAS SO INVESTED. THE FORMAT AND STYLE ITS WRITTEN IN IS ABSOLUTELY GENIUS. GENUINELY SOMETHING INCREDIBLY UNIQUE THAT YOU DONT OFTEN SEE WITH BOOKS THESE DAYS.
April 14, 2020
An epic space novel that is includes everything from ramped artificial intelligence to aliens that hunt by your Aurora.
April 17, 2020
The writing style was a little distracting, but great story!
January 18, 2022
Sci-fi done well
March 12, 2022
Sci-fi is not my jam, but the way that these plot-twists brought me to my KNEES.
“He presses the triggers. And like roses in his hands, death blooms.”
“He presses the triggers. And like roses in his hands, death blooms.”
June 2, 2024
I liked the way that these books are written in documents and comes and stuff. This is one of my new favorite seris!!!
September 10, 2024
It’s soooo good!! A great YA series 🥰✨
November 11, 2023
4.5⭐
Gemina - 5⭐
Illuminae - 5⭐
Memento - 5⭐
Obsidio - 4⭐
Gemina - 5⭐
Illuminae - 5⭐
Memento - 5⭐
Obsidio - 4⭐
June 16, 2023
I've never read anything in this style before, it was so fast to read and such an incredible story to follow.
October 21, 2020
Pleasantly surprised with this one, sci-fi isn't my usual cup of tea but after struggling with the first few chapters and the odd format, I bought the audiobooks to listen along with the books.. Game changer. Full cast audio, it was bigger than just reading a series.. It was a full-on experience like no other. If you're struggling with the books too, recommend the audio... You won't be disappointed!
December 21, 2021
I loved the relationships between the characters and the way that the series was displayed (multimedia) as I really felt like I was apart of the investigation.
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews