Illuminae: The Illuminae Files_01

YA Fiction

E/A Kaufman, Amie and Jay Kristoff. Illuminae: The Illuminae Files_01. Knopf, 2015. 608p. 978-0-533-49911-7. 18.99.

The day that Kady dumps Ezra – their whole world falls apart. Their remote mining colony, Kerenza, is attacked by a warship, the Lincoln, which is owned by a rival corporation—BeiTech Industries.  Kady and Ezra escape with their lives to end up on two different ships.  Kady and her mother are on the Hypatia, the scientific exploration vessel, while Ezra is on the battlecarrier Alexander and is later conscripted by the United Terran Authority, as a pilot for their Cyclone fighter crafts.  The Lincoln is relentlessly pursuing them, and it’s only a matter of time before it catches up to them.  Meanwhile, a deadly and highly contagious plague breaks out, and their artificial intelligence, AIDAN, seems to have gone mad and turned against them.  When Kady realizes that Ezra is stuck onboard the Alexander the ship where the virus is getting out of control, (even though she swore she never wanted to see or talk to him again) she risks everything to go and save him. A great sci-fi thriller illustrated and told as a dossier of memoranda, reports, emails, journal entries, intercepted messages and other “classified” documents.  Camille Campos, YA Librarian, LAPL, Angeles Mesa Branch Library