Book Review: Unearthed (Unearthed #1)

Release Date: January 9, 2017
Authors: Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Length: 336 pages
Source: Purchased Australian Edition

When Earth intercepts a message from a long-extinct alien race, it seems like the solution the planet has been waiting for. The Undying's advanced technology has the potential to undo environmental damage and turn lives around, and Gaia, their former home planet, is a treasure trove waiting to be uncovered.

For Jules Addison and his fellow scholars, the discovery of an alien culture offers unprecedented opportunity for study... as long as scavengers like Amelia Radcliffe don't loot everything first. Mia and Jules' different reasons for smuggling themselves onto Gaia put them immediately at odds, but after escaping a dangerous confrontation with other scavvers, they form a fragile alliance.

In order to penetrate the Undying temple and reach the tech and information hidden within, the two must decode the ancient race's secrets and survive their traps. But the more they learn about the Undying, the more their presence in the temple seems to be part of a grand design that could spell the end of the human race...

    

Review:

Protagonists: Mia and Jules find themselves on Gaia for very different reasons, Jules wants to study the lost civilization of the planet and Mia wants to scavenge it for all it's worth. These two characters collide in a fantastic way that really shows off just how well they work together. As the story moves forward we learn more about each character and why they decided to take a rather illegal trip to a mostly unexplored planet. I loved these characters so much, Mia is a serious firecracker who will put you in your place while Jules is a strict academic who's spent nearly his whole life dreaming of Gaia. These characters are fantastic separate from one another, but it's when they work together that they truly shine.

Romance: It's almost immediately clear from the moment they meet that Mia and Jules are attracted to one another, in fact, if I had to say anything bad about the romance in this book it would be that the attraction between the two was brought up a little too often and felt a bit heavy-handed at times. That doesn't, however, affect their chemistry in any way. These characters fit together in a way that's really hard to describe. While I've shipped my fair share of YA couples, there's something about this couple that sets them apart, a sense of rightness in their relationship, both before and after it becomes romantic. While the attraction between the two is clear from nearly the beginning, this is a rather slow burning romance as the secrets these two characters hide could very well tear them apart.

World Building: So, when I first read that this was comparable to Indiana Jones meets Lara Croft in space, I have to say I was almost instantly hooked. Now I've never really seen an Indiana Jones/Lara Croft style team up before, but if there's another one out there somewhere I'd love to see/read it because it seems so perfect after reading this story. I mean, I can't believe no one's thought about it before (maybe they have and I just don't know about it) because once things get going in this story they don't really stop. The Sci-Fi element to this story is amazing, a dying Earth in need of a miracle and a distant planet that just may hold the key to humanity's survival, it was incredible. I loved learning about the alien race on this planet and seeing how they would test the beings who received their call. These authors do suspense like no one else and there were many times throughout this story where I was genuinely worried about our protagonists and they narrate the freaking story.

Predictability: I feel that the perfect book is one that you can both solve some of the puzzles to while being completely caught off guard by fantastic twists and turns. This is one such story, or at least it was for me. If you know how to pick through foreshadowing, then one of the biggest twists of this book will be very apparent to you, that in no way means you shouldn't read this book, in fact, it's that reveal that even though I figured it out, still sent me reeling. Plus, there are all sorts of other twists this story has to offer. There was one twist in particular that had next to no foreshadowing, but utterly blew me away with how much it made sense once revealed. This book will take you on a wild ride, that's for sure.

Ending: So, going into this I expected a more or less standalone story, thinking that this was similar to the Starbound trilogy by the same authors and that the next installment would be a companion novel following the same threads that this story did. However, this is the first installment in a duology that from everything I can tell will have the same narrators and that completely changes how I went into the end of this story. The final climax is a high adrenaline and suspenseful ride that ends with a cliffhanger so crazy, that it just might make sense.

Rating:

Even with being a little heavy handed with the attraction between our two main characters, this story didn't fail to delight, entertain, and thrill. I can't wait until the next and final installment releases so I can figure out what will happen to these characters.

Gemina (The Illuminae Files #2) by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff (WOW #10)

Waiting on Wednesday is a meme hosted by Jill at Breaking The Spine that spotlights upcoming releases that everyone’s excited about!

Moving to a space station at the edge of the galaxy was always going to be the death of Hanna’s social life. Nobody said it might actually get her killed.

Hanna Donnelly is the station captain’s pampered daughter; Nik Malikov the reluctant member of a notorious crime family. But while the pair are struggling with the realities of life aboard the galaxy's most boring space station, little do they know that Kady Grant and the Hypatia are headed right toward Heimdall, carrying news of the Kerenza invasion. 

When an elite BeiTech strike team invades the station, Hanna and Nik are thrown together to defend their home. But alien predators are picking off the station residents one by one, and a malfunction in the station's wormhole means the space-time continuum might be ripped in two before dinner. Soon Hanna and Nik aren’t just fighting for their own surivival; the fate of everyone on the Hypatia—and possibly the known universe—is in their hands.

But relax. They've totally got this. They hope.

Gemina releases on October 18, 2016 from Knopf Books for Young Readers

YAAASSSS! I loved Illuminae so much and while I kind of expected book 2 to be a direct sequel, but I'm actually kind of more excited that it's a companion novel. The storytelling of this series is fantastic and if this installment is even half as good as the first I'm going to be sooooo happy, but hopefully it's better!

So, what are you waiting for this Wednesday?

Book Review: Illuminae (The Illuminae Files #1)

Release Date: October 20, 2015
Authors: Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
Length: 608 pages

This morning, Kady thought breaking up with Ezra was the hardest thing she’d have to do.

This afternoon, her planet was invaded.

The year is 2575, and two rival megacorporations are at war over a planet that’s little more than an ice-covered speck at the edge of the universe. Too bad nobody thought to warn the people living on it. With enemy fire raining down on them, Kady and Ezra—who are barely even talking to each other—are forced to fight their way onto an evacuating fleet, with an enemy warship in hot pursuit.

But their problems are just getting started. A deadly plague has broken out and is mutating, with terrifying results; the fleet's AI, which should be protecting them, may actually be their enemy; and nobody in charge will say what’s really going on. As Kady hacks into a tangled web of data to find the truth, it's clear only one person can help her bring it all to light: the ex-boyfriend she swore she'd never speak to again.

Told through a fascinating dossier of hacked documents—including emails, schematics, military files, IMs, medical reports, interviews, and more—Illuminae is the first book in a heart-stopping, high-octane trilogy about lives interrupted, the price of truth, and the courage of everyday heroes.

    

Review:

Protagonists:So Ezra and Kady just broke up, and during a class that they share their planet is invaded. In the chaos they end up getting separated and wind up on two different evacuating ships. Because of how this book is told you never fully get a feel for the character development. It's not that they don't develop over time, they most definitely do it's just that it's really hard to pick up on. At first both character are very angry and hurt and they sort of lean on not only each other, but their newly appointed jobs as well to kind of figure out who they are and who they want to be.

Romance: I was utterly shocked at this romance. First off this is basically an established romance when the book begins. Sure they're broken up but honestly that doesn't last very long. Even though we don't really see these two come back together, or see that origin story that started off their romance, I found myself really rooting for the couple. This rarely happens when there's already an established romance, but I think how this book is written really lends itself well to this type of romance. It was fun and there was a definite chemistry between the two characters even though they really only talk over instant messaging.

World-Building: This book you guys, this book. It's essentially a fictitious compilation of files  amassed in a dossier that tell this story. You have surveillance cam logs, IMs, schematics, military files, e-mails, journal entries, etc. that all work together to form such an amazing story. It's unlike anything I've ever read before. While I'm not a huge sci-fi fanatic and the techno mumbo-jumbo can be a bit confusing, I always felt that it was meant to be that way and that there wasn't anything I was missing out on. I have to say, I know there's an audio book version, but I implore you that if you are going to read this book, READ it, I'm sure the audio book is a totally different experience and you'll get all the information you'll need for the story to make sense, but this book is something else entirely and I can't stress how much you need to read it.

Predictability: So confession time, I actually spoiled myself on something substantial at the end, it's not something too huge, and to be honest I probably would have figured it out anyway, but it definitely affected how the twists toward the end of the book affected me. That being said though, there were so many twists in this book and I loved each and every one of them. Because this book is essentially the meat of the story without a lot of extra exposition, it was kept very high-octane and there was never a lull in the story. While I could guess a few things due to context clues and foreshadowing, for the most part I was caught off guard many times while reading this book.

Ending: You never really find out quite why this book is entitled Illuminae until the very end of this book, and while I'm still not sure why that name was chosen in the book, the title makes sense once you read it. Honestly I can't quite pinpoint a final climax because as I said before this whole book was extremely climactic, Everything toward the end of the book was absolutely epic, and with ho this book is written it's not jsut something you read it's something you feel. As the book winds down there's a certain document/Instant Message log that takes this book to a whole new level, and leaves the book with this epic seismic cliffhanger that left me in NEED of the next book.

Rating:

For how this book is written alone it should get five stars, it takes some real talent to pull something like that off so effectively, but then you have the story which is so beyond phenomenal. In all honesty I think that this may very well be my favorite book of the year so far! I literally cannot wait until the next one!