A sequel that lived up to my ultra-excited expectations – ‘Gemina’

I was jigging-foot excited to read ‘Gemina‘ by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff. Nervous too. Because, seriously, ‘Illuminae‘ was so damn mindblowing I wasn’t sure anything could ever come up to standard.

Thankfully, ‘Gemina’ came through for me. There was something about picking it up and leaping back into the unconventional, characteristic setup that had my blood singing so much those lamina would have sensed me from half a universe away.

Why?

• Characters of zing
• World-building of awesome
• Plot of intricate amaze-balls

Hooray, ‘Gemina’ happily thumbed its nose at the Seriously Sucky Sequel Syndrome. Want to know more? Brace yourselves and read on…

The characters were zingy

Humour, funk and feeling. I connected with the new characters, and I loved hearing from the old ones.

The world-building was ace

I was there, that station was real, I could see it and imagine it. How these guys make this stuff up inspires me!

The plot was a-maze-ing

There was one particular twist crept up on me and whacked me with its psychoactive venom. Then another one came and sucked out my brainwaves.

In fact, I’ve lost count of the twists. Need to read it again-again (because I’ve already gone through twice – once to read it, again to understand it) (Still don’t fully understand it) (I like that).

Compared to #1?

Sure, I missed the instant connection I had with Ezra and Kady in ‘Illuminae’, and of course AIDAN’s painful descent (ascent?) into humanity. There were moments where ‘Gemina’ even felt a tad contrived. But I still loved it with a stay-up-all-night chew-fingernails-too-short kind of love.

Well done and hurrah and please start writing the next book! Because I need to see Frobisher taken down!

Sequels – to read or not to read…

Its a sad fact that not all sequels are awesome. I like to protect myself against SSSs – Seriously Sucky Sequels (and I definitely try to avoid TTTs – Totally Terrible Trilogies)…

…because sometimes it’s better to not know what happens.

Great, funky first book MCs too often become wishy-washy love-lorn second book disappointments. Some of my absolutely favourite books have been firsts in series where I have never read on (or worse – I wished I hadn’t).

I’ve figured out how to avoid SSS. Don’t gasp. My reading time is precious, so I drop all niceties. I check online to see what the plot of the next book is, and use that to decide whether to read on, or whether to simply imagine what happens in my head.

Luckily, I found ‘Gemina’ was introducing entirely new characters, and that’s a big thumbs up for me. Think the Lunar Chronicles… So I forged on and reserved it.

I’m so glad!

How about you? Anyone else read it? What did you think?