Illuminae

The Illuminae Files, Book 1

By: Amie Kaufman, Jay Kristoff

Narrated by: Olivia Taylor Dudley, Lincoln Hoppe, Jonathan McClain

Length: 11 hrs and 40 mins

Publisher's Summary

Brad Pitt's Plan B Entertainment and Warner Bros are set to bring YA sci-fi novel Illuminae to the big screen.

The year is 2575, and two megacorporations 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 spaceships and is mutating, with terrifying results. Their ship's protection is seriously flawed.

No one will say what is going on. As Kady hacks in to a tangled web of data to find the truth, it's clear only one person can help her: Ezra. And the only problem with that is they split up before all this trouble started, and she isn't supposed to be talking to him.

A fantastically original, heart-stopping adventure where everything is definitely more dangerous than it seems.

©2015 Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff (P)2015 Listening Library

Not the ideal pandemic read...

The epistolary-type format of this book is very interesting and different, but I thought it might make it difficult to read the book, so I picked up the audiobook and I'm glad I did. The performance 100% made this.

The first half of the story I found incredibly slow, with all the good pieces of writing (unattributed) quotes from other pieces of literature. I was about to give up when the action started. Some of the action hit a bit close to home because airborne virus anyone? And it was incredibly gory and intense. Not my kind of book right now, especially when they had the "wear your face masks and wash your hands" announcement. *shiver*. But I had to know what happened.

I found the last quarter of the book the most enjoyable, even though there was a lot of death. It was intense and unpredictable and the performances greatly enhanced it.

An epic blind movie!

I've always been skeptical of audiobooks and Illuminae was my very first audiobook, which I downloaded during my free trial with Audible. The experience was seriously awesome, with more than 20 narrators and special effects! The narrators were so animated, and the explosive special effects really made the experience like watching a movie blind. Illuminae has ruined me for all other audiobooks!

A. MUST. READ. (or listen lol)

I JUST LOVED IT. THIS SHOULD BE ON YOUR BUCKET LIST. LISTEN TO IT OR LOSE IT.

Pretty good, but....

Great story, and well narrated, except for the poor enunciation of one of the line-up.

However, even the most innocuous profanity was 'bleeped out' by suppressing the volume of such words. The irony was that it was totally ineffective in making the words and just proved to be extremely irritating.

Either remove the words from the script, or man-up and read the ******* words precisely how the author ******* intended.

The first audiobook I stopped listening to after half an hour.

If you are over 21, or not raised on Northern American popular culture, this book is very hard going. 17-year-olds with the same command of sarcasm as Frasier Crane and a constant stream of it; 10 words used in "witty" put-downs when 2 would do. Violent death and destruction of immediate family but so signs of mental trauma or PTSD. Yep. Another potentially great story sacrificed on the altar of juvenile storytelling. No wonder Hollywood is making a film out of it. It will suit the 2D, vapid imaginations of those audiences whose cultural compasses consist solely of superheroes and Big Bang Theory.

@#!*@$# BRILLIANT!!!!

I listened to this when it first came out and am revisiting it again as book 3 has just been released. I am pretty sure I have reviewed it before, but here goes anyway.
It's awesome, the whole thing from the story to the production of the audio book are done so well that if you fail to at least appreciate that about it, then I feel there is no hope for humanity after all!! (only kidding)
I am sure this is not for everyone, for me it’s been a very large gulp of breathable very fresh air! Heart warmimg and even more heart breaking in parts (ok yes I cried) The whole story, that has been masterfully constructed by way of files (thus the title ) which are in the form of personal accounts, messages, recordings and investigations, is just brilliant. This is basically a story of the tragically horrifying disaster that starts at an illegal mining colony that is caused by corrupt corporate greed what follows is the lengths they will go to cover up the deed . As the story continues the ripple effect of the situation unfolds in all it's vile glory. Book 2 continues the story from another place in the galaxy that unfortunately becomes an unwilling part of the plot to cover up the facts, again it's also a great listen. I highly recommend reading or listening to them back to back if possible as it gives you the best experience of the complexity and quality of these books.
Jay Kristoff is a particularly great writer and if you enjoy sci-fi /fantasy then I would also highly recommend the Nevernight books.
I hope you enjoy this sci-fi series as much as I did............I just wonder when this will become a movie or three??

Curious narration choice.

Good solid teen sci-fi fare. It was curious that the most graphic violence is fine but swearing is censored. This felt like the NRA approved text.

Doesn't Engage

I purchased books 1 & 2. Stupid thing to do.
Could not finish book 1.
Unusual way of telling the story and plot. Disjoined in many ways.
I strongly dislike the move not to give proper voice to swear words e.g.fu...ing etc. Felt like I was being treated like a child.

Surveillance summary, prepared by Analyst ID 1903

As the footage starts, our hero is seen sat in his comfy chair, headphones on while a cacophony of industrial power tool noise drowns out any sound that may be coming from his vicinity. His expressions change frequently showing rapid changes of emotional state...

In all seriousness, I've had this series queued up for assimilation for a good while but other books kept jumping ahead for one reason or another. Having started, I'm struggling to understand why.

The basic concepts are nothing new - a dystopian future where corporations hold the power and government seems to have been reduced to the role of police, space travel via wormholes and an AI running a battleship seemingly gone insane whilst one corporation effectively declares war on another.

The real winner here is the format. Made up of transcripts of emails, IMs, 'journal entries' (for lack of a better description) and reports on video surveillance recovered. The book looks amazing and the audio book is brought to life with a full cast and background noise/effects.

Can't wait to find out what happens next...

SHOOK UP!

Slow to get going, for sure, and occasionally difficult to connect with the many many many characters but Illuminae is clever, and twisty turny, and the latter half shook me up good and proper!

If you've seen a physical copy of the book, you'll know it is made up of a lot of different files and formats and I wondered how that would translate to audio. It turns out, it transfers incredibly well creating an immersive listening experience.

Adventure space Odyssey

Great space zombie virus adventure very clever and its production hints of 2001 space Odyssey with the few rage zombies of course .. i’m looking forward to listening to the other books in the series not just listening to books read but being performed with the backing of music and sound effects not overly done but just enough to add to the experience highly recommend this book

A must listen

I will not lie, this was a book I bought in April 2020, purely because of the hype. I'd never really been interested in Sci-Fi, but I'd also told myself I needed to expand my reading horizons. And everyone was raving about it so I thought why not. It's only taken until I decided to do the A-Z 2021 challenge that I finally picked this up to fill the I section. And WOW.

The formatting of this book is insane, absolutely amazing and so creatively planned out but equally insane. I loved it. When I started my Audible membership I had asked some friends for recommendations and they said Illuminae as its multicast (more than 1 voice actor). So I decided that I'd pair the amazingly formatted physical book with the full cast audiobook and read them in tandem. I do not regret it.

The cast on the Audible audiobook is amazing and really bought the book to life. It felt like listening to a radio drama and I truly got lost in the book. The use of sound effects for certain parts really added to the atmosphere.

The formatting for the physical book is like nothing I've ever seen before, a mix of transcripts, conversation logs, reports, post analysis and recorded commentary. This book is not written in continuous pro's. Each section designed to represent what it was. A report looked like a report, a IM chat looked like an IM chat. You get the picture. It was refreshing and oddly engaging. By pairing the audiobook with the physical it really helped make sense of the formatting.

As we are still in the throws of a pandemic this book might not be for everyone as it deals with its own pandemic. Thankfully, it's not anything like covid. It's probably worse actually. But I loved how the two authors had created the plot of this book, starting with a bang and then leading us up the garden path. Drawing the reader further into the book. As I got near the end of Illuminae, I thought to myself "how have they made this 3 books, it feels like it's coming to a natural close" but it did not. The end left a very intriguing premise still out there and a natural lead into book 2 without giving any of it away.

The two main characters felt a bit like chalk and cheese but that's usually how the best main characters are. I love Ezra and his overall vibe. Kady took some getting used to but in the end I did like her and could picture her to be real. There's a wide array of side characters, which I found were bought to life amazing by the narrators of the audiobook. I'm not sure if I'd have done them justice if I'd just read the physical book on it's own. But that should say more about me as a reader than the book.

Everything felt really well put together, for me I loved this read and frustrated as to why I put it off for so long. If you want to dabble in sci-fi to see what you think this is the book for you!

Every audiobook deserves a full cast

Wow, where to start with this review? I have been badgering the BF to use his audible credits for this series for months. I had heard on Instagram how it was one of the most amazing audio books. I don't really like audiobooks. I have always struggled with the voices and find they ruin my perception of the character. But this book has a full cast and it changes everything! EVERYTHING! Every audiobook deserves a full cast. If all audiobooks where like this I would definitely listen to more of them. 

On to the actual story... I love the two main characters in this book. Kady is spunky but also very clever. Ezra is hilarious. I absolutely love his sense of humour.

Kady goes through so so much in this book that by the end you forget that she is only a 17 year old girl. The things that she encounters, the emotional turmoil is absolutely harrowing and by the end she is no longer the same teenage girl she was.

The other character we should also talk about is AIDAN. Well what can we say about AIDAN? There is so much to say and yet so little I can share. He is such a quotable character.

This book is full of twists and turns I did not see coming. I absolutely loved every word which is weird to say when most of it was actually heartbreaking. These authors work so well together. The story is seamless and flows effortlessly.

As soon as I finished this book I downloaded the next audio in the series because I just could not leave it there.