Illuminae

Illuminae Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff 4 / 5	Published October 20, 2015 First Sentence "So here's the file that almost killed me, Director."
Publisher's Description: 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.
Dear Reader, This book's structure was unlike anything I'd ever read before. Plus, can you beat combining the delicious horror of zombies* with the vast terror of space? Because that is exactly what these authors have done. And it is done extremely well. Throw in AI with a real personality, an evil megacorporation, and loved ones torn apart, and you've got a recipe for a riveting book. It was done in such a unique way, too: the reader is told the story by reading through a stack of classified documents intended to recreate the story, collected in pieces from various places (email and chat transcripts, video feed analyses, official documents, voice recordings, debriefing interviews). And when I say "stack", I mean it - this book is 599 pages long! But it truly flies, especially when you hit the halfway mark. (Don't worry, getting to page 300 sounds daunting, but it took me no time at all. Plus - I kind of liked how every page was marked as, for example, 289/599 so you always knew exactly where your endpoint was!) I love that the true hero of this book is a 17-year-old girl who is a badass hacker. Things started off a bit iffy for me as the first thing you read is an interview transcript where the girl and her recently ex-boyfriend are mostly talking about their anger towards each other, with a bit of background "my planet was getting attacked simultaneously" thrown in. But it works itself into a great story, so stick with it for a few pages. Plus, I started imagining Ezra as a young Captain Mal, which helped when reading his parts - you can tell from the clever banter that the authors are probably big fans of Firefly. That kind of helped cement my love for the book. (Maybe it was just that they used "'verse" a lot, but I do think it was more than that.) And there were a couple twists that I didn't even see coming! Which was pretty great. You'll also be impressed by some of the art this book employs to tell its story - it's as much a visual as a textual piece of work. And a surprisingly emotional and deep one, considering some of its subject matter. You'll find yourself aligning with people you didn't think you would. Every character is memorable and multidimensional, and you often feel as if you are traveling alongside them on this adventure. So if you are in the mood for some space travel, I say pick this one up! Yours, Arianna *If we're going to be technical, they are pseudo-zombies, but close enough. P.S. This book was one we grabbed as an ARC from BEA this past year.

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The Wives of Los Alamos

The Wives of Los Alamos TaraShea Nesbit 4 / 5	Published 2014 First Sentence "Over the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, the Pacific, the Arctic, the Atlantic; in sewers, in trenches, on the ocean, in the sky: there was a war going on."
Publisher's Description: Their average age was twenty-five. They came from Berkeley, Cambridge, Paris, London, Chicago—and arrived in New Mexico ready for adventure, or at least resigned to it. But hope quickly turned to hardship as they were forced to adapt to a rugged military town where everything was a secret, including what their husbands were doing at the lab. They lived in barely finished houses with a P.O. box for an address in a town wreathed with barbed wire, all for the benefit of a project that didn’t exist as far as the public knew. Though they were strangers, they joined together—adapting to a landscape as fierce as it was absorbing, full of the banalities of everyday life and the drama of scientific discovery.  And while the bomb was being invented, babies were born, friendships were forged, children grew up, and Los Alamos gradually transformed from an abandoned school on a hill into a real community: one that was strained by the words they couldn’t say out loud, the letters they couldn’t send home, the freedom they didn’t have. But the end of the war would bring even bigger challenges to the people of Los Alamos, as the scientists and their families struggled with the burden of their contribution to the most destructive force in the history of mankind. The Wives of Los Alamos is a novel that sheds light onto one of the strangest and most monumental research projects in modern history, and a testament to a remarkable group of women who carved out a life for themselves, in spite of the chaos of the war and the shroud of intense secrecy.
Dear Reader, This book was so interestingly done, and surprisingly good despite its unique approach.  The author wrote the book from the second person, inviting the reader into the "group" through the use of "we" and "us" - which also positioned the wives as a group, and I really liked that.  This wasn't a story about one person's experience, but rather a kind of study about the situation that the families of Los Alamos experienced in the early 1940s.  Los Alamos being, of course, the main project site for the development of the atomic bomb during WWII.  I was fascinated by the shroud of secrecy that (understandably) surrounded the place.  The government went so far as to make the scientists and their families go by different surnames, particularly if they had very foreign-sounding names like Fermi or Bacher (they became Farmer and Baker, respectively).  The wives had no idea what they were getting themselves into, and no matter how close they were to their husbands, the men would not divulge anything related to their work.  I can't imagine being in that situation as a wife and mother - uprooting your family in the middle of regular life, bringing them halfway across the country to a remote locale, being told nothing, simply obeying with the understanding that your husbands are working on something vital to the war effort.  The women had to leave their parents and siblings behind (and could only communicate with them through censored letters; they were not allowed to leave to visit family members unless someone died).  They had to say immediate goodbyes to the lives and homes they had established, as did their children.  I suppose the lucky thing is that they were all in this same situation, and so while of course there was pettiness and gossip at times, there was also a strong sense of camaraderie between these women, no matter their backgrounds.   They supported each other through such surreal times.  They fought to make the best of a very strange situation - this included starting fights with the officials regarding the supplies and furniture they were allotted. I just can't imagine what it would be like to live in "Sha-La," as they jokingly referred to this ultimately horrific site: short for the paradise of Shangri-La.  These women kept their heads up and retained their sanity despite the close quarters, poor housing, uncertainty, new climate, and totally foreign landscape (in more ways than one).  You may not agree with the Los Alamos project or what these people did there, but I guarantee you'll be as fascinated as I was when you read about it!  I learned so much. I'm including below a few pictures of the site at the time; it has since been developed into a modern atomic testing laboratory site.  Note the dryness and the baking sun, especially! from Los Alamos National Laboratory from The Manhattan Project from National Nuclear Security Administration If, like me before reading this book, you are largely ignorant about Los Alamos?  Do yourself a favor and read Ms. Nesbit's book. If only for the amazing history lesson. Yours, Arianna

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