ILLUMINAE: The ILLUMINAE Files_01 is the first book in The Illuminae Files.
Synopsis[]
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 (Wallace Ulyanov Consortium and BeiTech Industries) 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.[1]
Plot[]
BeiTech invades the planet Kerenza IV after discovering that it harbors an illegal hermium mining colony, killing most of the population in the hopes of taking the planet over for iself. Ezra Mason, Kady Grant, and her mother are among the few survivors: Ezra on the warship Alexander, Kady on the accompanying research vessel Hypatia,and her mother on the supply ship Copernicus, trying to reach the Heimdall Jump Station waypoint before the BeiTech warship Lincoln intercepts and destroys them.
While they try to escape, a deadly bio-chemical weapon that BeiTech released on Kerenza IV has spread from contaminated refugees to the crew of the Copernicus, who in turn bring it to the Alexander. When the Alexander's Artificial Intelligence Defense Analytics Network system (AIDAN), discovers this, it goes rogue and destroys the Copernicus, killingKady's mother and all of the other refugees there. Ezra and Kady have to work together with engineer Byron Zhang, who communicates cross-ships with Kady to not only beat the Lincoln to Heimdall, but also to disable AIDAN.
The virus attacks and debilitates victims' nervous system. The more deadly strain of the virus, dubbed Phobos, doubles the effects, as demonstrated by the little girl in Bay 4 who stabs and penetrates the hazmat suit of James "Jimmy" McNulty, who later kills himself when he feels the virus affecting him, and whose last testament Kady finds when she boards the Alexander in an effort to help AIDAN delay the Lincoln from catching the fleeing Hypatia.
The mutating virus, however, spreads further and the Afflicted break out of Bay 4, the designated quarantine zone, and go on a killing spree; prompting the few remaining persons of command to make a desperate run for the launch bays to escape to the Hypatia with some 1000 civilian survivors. Slightly less than 250 of them make it to the Hypatia, and not all of those make it unscathed by Phobos, which weighs heavily on Kady, as she was the one navigating for most of the small groups that did not make it.
Once on board, Captain Ann Chau of the Hypatia quarantines the fighter pilots and med-evacs similarly in different hangars. To protect the rest of those on board the Hypatia, she flushes Mikael "Chatter" Carlin and his group of Cyclone pilots out an airlock, due to a few possibly infected among their numbers. Ezra nearly misses being spaced in that group; he was med-evaced because of his broken arm, presumably in the mad dash for the launch bays. AIDAN, however, has tricked Kady into believing that he was dead in order to get her to carry out her mission of battling the Lincoln from the inside out.
Together, she and AIDAN attack the Lincoln using the Alexander's Defense Grid System (DGS). However, after the attack, the Alexander has been so damaged that there is seemingly no escape for either of them, but AIDAN leads a radiation-poisoned Kady to the last Cyclone left on the ship and into the waiting bay of the Hypatia, where everyone watches the Alexander "die". AIDAN remains faithfully in Kady's data pad, always ready to assist her.
Characters[]
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- AIDAN - The Alexander's Artifical Intelligence, which has been damaged during the attack on Kerenza IV
- Leanne Frobisher - Director of BeiTech Industries
- Antony Mason - Ezra Mason's father; his whereabouts and whether he died in the attack on Kerenza IV is unclear
- Isaac Grant - Kady Grant's father, who works at Heimdall Jump Station; it is unclear whether he is alive or was murdered by BeiTech Industries
Other Covers[]
Trivia[]
- ILLUMINAE was sold to Random House based on a 130 page sample, which included rough designs of the pages designed by Jay Kristoff, who studied graphic design and used to work as an art director.[2]
- "Illuminae" means "the radiant ones" or "those who shed light" in Latin. Jay Kristoff came up with the title during a Tool concert, not knowning that it was a real Latin word until a year later.[2]
- Ezra's AAR on page 42 was the first scene written for the novel, and was originally intended to be the opening of the book, until the authors decided to discard this idea.[2]
- The binary at the edges of Kady's journal pages reads "Death by Giant Slug to the reader of this journal" when translated.[2]
- Leigh Bardugo is listed amongst the casualty list of the Copernicus; it is a name of an actual author. This easter egg however causes a slight continuity error, for it appears again in GEMINA: The ILLUMINAE Files 02, as another eventual casualty.
Satya Achanti