Illuminae, by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Well, that was a fun ride!

**Note that this review is more spoilery than my usual reviews.**

Illuminae is getting a lot of hype that it doesn't even need, because it has all the stuff. I mean, think about any stuff that might make a bestselling YA sci fi novel, and this book has all of it. In fact, think about anything from any successful sci fi movie of the last 20 years, and this book probably has it.

(Except light sabers. There aren't any of those.)(Or aliens. Guess that's a pretty big one.)

I wasn't going to be spoilery about it, but then I saw Jay Kristof's Goodreads review, and it pretty much summarizes the whole plot (which, frankly, is pretty easy to do), so I guess it doesn't matter. If you think zombies on spaceships sounds like an awesome premise, then this is the book for you.

(There aren't any clones, either. Maybe there should have been clones. (I bet there are clones in the second book.))(Maybe there will be aliens in the second book!)

I have no doubt the movie will be coming out within the next year.

Am I sounding a little cynical about this book? Don't get me wrong, it was a highly entertaining read. Lots of action right from the get go, and the different formats were kind of fun and only sometimes annoying. It was entirely predictable, to the point that I could skip some sections and skim through others, because I knew what they were going to say. I lost a lot of interest once the zombies got on board, because I think zombies are incredibly boring. But I was invested enough to keep reading.

The crazy AI character was pretty good. The romance was formulaic, but I enjoyed the snarky banter.

Worth reading in the same way blockbuster action films are worth seeing and cheezies are worth eating. Great cover.