Gemina, a pretty good sequel

 Gemina review, by Sahnan Haber

CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS FOR ILLUMINAE

After reading and really liking Illuminae, I decided to read its sequel, Gemina. Like Illuminae, Gemina is written as a compilation of files, and is set in the same time period, and the same relative area. However, for the first major part of the book, there aren’t any of the same characters as in the first book, and there is little to no reference of the events that happened in Illuminae.

Gemina starts around where Illuminae ended, and at the Heimdall Waypoint, which has the wormhole that the survivors of BeiTech’s attacks are trying to reach. At the start of the book, the residents and staff at the Heimdall Waypoint are preparing for a large holiday across the entire universe, Terra Day. During the chaos from preparing for Terra Day, a squad of 24 BeiTech soldiers are smuggled into the Heimdall space station before they kill the commander and take control of the wormhole so as to not let the survivors escape and tell the world about BeiTech’s attacks. A group of 3 residents aboard Heimdall, including the daughter of the former commander try to take back control of Heimdall, and in the process find out about BeiTech’s attacks.


What I liked 

I really liked the second half of this book, once the action started, and characters from the first book make appearances. I also really liked the problems and paradoxes that the characters encountered due to interfering with wormholes, and the solutions that they had to come up with to deal with them. Some of the new characters introduced in this book (including some of the villains) are much more complex and relatable.


What I didn’t like

A large portion of the start felt extremely slow and boring to me, and it kind of made me doubt how good the book would be (especially because after reading the first book, I didn’t feel that it needed a sequel). Another problem I had with the book is that near the end there were *a lot* of plot twists that felt clunky, or forced, and put in just to keep one of the characters alive. Not to say that all of the plot twists were bad, but I just think there were too many of them.


Review

Gemina was a good read, and despite it not being as good as the first book, I still really enjoyed reading it. Gemina had some really interesting characters and interactions that made it hard to put down, but it also had slow spots that made it kind of hard to read. The way that the plot develops, and eventually ends throughout the whole story is really good, and because of this, I would give Gemina a 3.5 stars out of 5.

Comments

  1. Connor GuarnieriNovember 12, 2022 at 5:32 PM

    I liked how you split this up into easy to follow and read sections. I didn't understand why the review is at the bottom, after you technically reviewed it before? I don't know. I also liked that you were honest and told the truth on how the book wasn't the best.

    ReplyDelete

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