Current Listen: The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
Let's talk about Illuminae, by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff.
Kady and Ezra have just broken up. Very theatrically. Both are moping happily when their planet, the site of an illegal mining operation, is attacked by a rival interstellar corporation.
All hell breaks loose. Kady, Ezra, and the thousands of escaping refugees from the planet are evacuated onto the only three available ships: a commercial vessel from the planet, a science research vessel, and a United Terran Authority battle ship. The three damaged ships must make it out of the wilderness of space to a UTA check point with the evil corporation BeiTech hot on their tails.
To make matters worse, it soons become clear that one ship's AI system, AIDAN, might have been damaged to the point of...insanity. And BeiTech may have released some sort of chemical agent onto the refugees on one of the othe ships. Kady and Ezra must overcome their differences. They might be the only hope the fleet has.
OH MY GOODNESS WHAT A BOOK. If that plot seems a little complicated...it is. It's much more complex than your average YA, and it made it a MUCH better book. On top of that, the format of the book is a "casefile" compiled by one of the corporations to document the whole mess after the fact. So many pages are in the form of email correspondence, IMs, or descriptions of video surveillance. Any of this could have been mediocre to the detriment of the book. FORTUNATELY, it was just...perfectly executed. Kady and Ezra are very well written characters, and Kady is about as far from damsel in distress as you can get. AIDAN, the damaged AI, is almost more intriguing than she, the AI system struggling with the idea of his own consciousness, trying to determine how to best "protect his fleet." Here are some samples of some of this REALLY NEAT art in the book:
This book, which comes in at 599 pages, is a little intimidating. Please don't let that stop you from reading it. It goes by quickly, and it's SO WORTH IT. The sequel, Gemina, reportedly comes out in October. 5/5 stars.
In other news, I've decided to participate in BookTube-A-Thon this year! This is an annual event from July 18-24 that is a whole week of reading. There are reading challenges and video challenges posted every day. I figured that, as a teacher, I don't have much of an excuse not do it. Hopefully it will get me more interested in making videos again! Which is scary, but fun. Here's a link to my "TBR" video, where I go through all of my picks for the different challenges:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTDWQ6dGWys
There will definitely be at LEAST one blog post, but I would count on more. Lots of reading happening in the next few weeks before school starts again. I should get back to it. That's all she read!
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