Reviews with content warning for Child death - Illuminae

Reviews tagging 'Child death'

Illuminae by Amie Kaufman, Jay Kristoff

55 reviews

marsh_mall0w's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

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edie_maeve's review against another edition

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dark emotional inspiring tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

4.5

This book.
I was not expecting this.
The second I opened it, I was transfixed.
I know that if you look at most of my other reviews with written parts are very positive, but this book really hit the spot.
The relationships and the actions of the characters, epic, and the plot is just phenomenal. There are a couple things I dislike, hence the 4.5 instead of 5 star rating, but the story was well told through this format.
Kristoff and Kaufman are an amazing duo, and their other series, The Aurora Cycle/Aurora Rising series is beautiful as well, and I highly recommend it.

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alexa's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated

2.75

so. i have been collecting some thoughts throughout this whole thing and they might not be especially cohesive, but that's ok, i was always more of a bullet list person.
i like the format of this, it was really interesting and fun, even if limited the amount of what you can learn about the world. some things were weirdly the same considering we're 500 years in the future, as i already expressed.
it might be just me, but the romantic drama between 2 high school seniors was the least interesting part of this thing, i found it irrelevant and at time or two a little bit annoying, but i suppose that's 17/18yo allo people for you. dunno, never been there.
honestly in general, i did not feel much attached to or interested in the characters beyond like a superficial level.
the ai in this was so weirdly melodramatic and rambling aside from its twisted logic which i'm assuming comes from the damage sustained.
in the q&a at the end, the authors mentioned talking with psychiatrists as part of the research that went into this and it does not sound very inspiring, considering the level and amount of demonization of people struggling with psychosis is staggering and infuriating, i think it was actually my biggest problem with this book.
the authors were quite good at creating tension and making one need to read on to know what happens next, i'll give them that.
however, i'm not entirely sure about continuing the series. it's likely i will i guess? not if they continue the ableism though, i'm not gonna stand for that

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lauramcc7's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

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maeverose's review against another edition

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Before I get to the review, if you were unaware, Jay Kristoff is racist and antisemitic, so if you wanna read this or any of his other books maybe buy them used.

I’m sorry but I don’t understand how people like this book. If you do, that’s great but wow it was so annoying to me. It literally took me over a year to get halfway through before I decided I couldn’t do it anymore.

Every character except Kady acted the exact same. They all acted like 15 year old boys who made misogynistic jokes and took nothing seriously.

Even the AI talks like a teenager’s edgy poetry

They were in an extremely dangerous and terrifying situation, literally watching people die in brutal ways, and they were cracking jokes as if everything was fine. The romance was cringey and felt completely out of place and unnecessary in this story. I have no idea why Kady liked Ezra. I’m 100% convinced that the only part Amie Kaufman got to write was Kady’s character and her scenes. The entire tone of this book was so off, it’s primarily focused on the romance, but there’s all of this extremely messed up stuff going on in the background that seems to be pretty urgent and important, but nobody is focusing on it as much as they should? And they’re cracking stupid jokes at the same time?

Omg and can we talk about Ezra literally calling women ‘fems’..? You cannot convince me a woman wrote that.

The one thing I did like was the epistolary format of it. This could’ve been such a cool story if it had been written by different authors, had no romance, and got rid of the out-of-place humor. (And was adult instead of YA..)

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