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Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff
Told through hacked files, chat logs, and secret reports, a corporate war spirals into catastrophe aboard fleeing ships—where a rogue AI and two unlikely teens become humanity’s wild card. Electrifying and inventive, Illuminae reads like a dossier you’re not meant to see.
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In Illuminae, did you enjoy ...
... the classified-dossier storytelling of chat logs, transcripts, and redacted files?
Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel
If the redacted files, IMs between Kady and Ezra, and AIDAN’s chilling inserts were your jam, you’ll love how Sleeping Giants unfolds through interview transcripts, mission reports, and confidential memos. Like the BeiTech/Kerenza dossier, a shadowy interviewer pieces together a conspiracy as Dr. Rose Franklin and her team uncover a giant artifact—each document sharpening the intrigue the way Illuminae’s file drops ramped up tension aboard the Hypatia.
... star-crossed messages that grow into something deeper amid apocalyptic conflict?
This Is How You Lose The Time War by Amal El Mohtar, Max Gladstone
If you felt the spark in Kady and Ezra’s banned chats cutting through the chaos of Kerenza’s attack and the Hypatia’s flight, This Is How You Lose the Time War channels that vibe—two rival agents, Red and Blue, trade covert letters across branching timelines, turning a cat-and-mouse game into an intimate, defiant bond. It’s the same adrenaline of forbidden communication under fire, but distilled into razor-sharp, poetic missives.
... white-knuckle, problem-solving survival under hostile, airless skies?
The Martian by Andy Weir
When Kady reroutes life support, outsmarts lockdowns, and battles a failing AI to keep people breathing after Kerenza, that relentless, fix-it-or-die energy is exactly what fuels The Martian. Stranded on Mars, Mark Watney logs each hack with gallows humor and gritty detail—like Illuminae’s frantic system patches and EVA scrambles—turning every air leak and power failure into a nail-biter you can’t look away from.
... breakneck twists inside a ruthless, high-tech dystopia run by an all-powerful elite?
Red Rising by Pierce Brown
If BeiTech’s massacre on Kerenza and the revelations about AIDAN’s choices kept yanking the floor out from under you, Red Rising delivers that same whiplash. Darrow infiltrates a brutal hierarchy where every alliance is a trap and victory demands impossible calls—the kind of gasp-inducing reversals and corridor-to-cockpit momentum you felt in Illuminae’s plague outbreak, shipboard battles, and last-second pivots.
... corporate conspiracies, derelict ships, and a terrifying pathogen spreading through space stations?
Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey
Loved Illuminae’s blend of deep-space chases, BeiTech cover-ups, and the Phobos plague turning people into nightmares? Leviathan Wakes hits those beats hard: Holden and Miller unravel a corporate-fueled mystery from the derelict Scopuli to Eros Station, where an alien protomolecule transforms victims in ways as haunting as Copernicus and the Hypatia logs—and the ship-to-ship standoffs crackle with the same high-stakes urgency.
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