Illuminae | Musings of the Monster Librarian

Obsidio (The Illuminae Files_03) by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff, illustrations by Marie Lu

Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2018

ISBN-13: 978-0553499193

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook, audio CD

Obsidio is the final volume of The Illuminae Files, preceded by Illuminae and Gemina. Illuminae started with the testimony of the Illuminae Group about the invasion of an illegal mining colony on an out of the way planet, Kerenza IV, owned by the mega-corporation Wallace Ulyanov Consortium (WUC), by a second mega-corporation, BeiTech Industries. An SOS call from Kerenza IV brought the only nearby warship of the United Terran Authority, the Alexander, to the defense of the colony. After crippling BeiTech’s jump platform and damaging its ships, and filled with refugees, along with two other ships belonging to the WUC, the Copernicus and the Hypatia, thousands of refugees escaped, chased by the crippled BeiTech ship Lincoln. The Alexander’s complex AI, AIDAN, which would have been able to speed things along, was damaged.

A bioweapon that BeiTech dropped on Kerenza IV during the attack infected hundreds of refugees, AIDAN, in an attempt to save the fleet, destroyed the Copernicus and took over the Alexander. Teenage hacker Kady Grant and her ex-boyfriend Ezra, now a pilot, take on AIDAN, and with its help destroy the Lincoln. The Alexander, now flooded with the infected, is destroyed in the successful attack on the Lincoln. Despite AIDAN’s participation in large-scale mass murder, Kady saves a copy of his programming onto her tablet before she escapes back to the Hypatia. Without any kind of jump platform, the remaining survivors of Kerenza IV must travel in real-time towards the nearest wormhole that opens to a jump station.

In Gemina, we learn that the BeiTech invasion forces at Kerenza IV has been unable to communicate with headquarters, and that a BeiTech spy embedded in communications at jump station Heimdall has been intercepting all messages from the Kerenza IV refugees. As a result, no one knows there has even been an invasion. An executive from BeiTech, learning from the spy that after many months of travel, the Hypatia is nearing the wormhole, sends a “cleanup team” to prevent the ship from getting through or any news of the attack from getting out. Heimdall’s commander’s daughter, Hanna Donnelly, and her drug dealer, Nik Malikov, are saved from being trapped by just missing the violent arrival of the assassins. Thus begins a deadly game of cat-and-mouse, with Hanna and Nik attempting to eliminate the various members of the kill team, psychotropic monsters, alternate realities, and, finally, contact with the Hypatia. Unable to save the station, Hanna and Nik collect as many station residents as they can onto the ship Mao, and flee through the wormhole, which collapses behind them.

In Obsidio, the refugees realize that there is no way for them to get back to a more central system, and the captain of the Hypatia decides their only option is to return to Kerenza IV. With the Hypatia falling to pieces, the decision is made to transfer everyone to the Mao and scuttle the ship. Kady argues in favor of leaving a beacon, with information about the attack, but the captain shuts her down. Determined that the destruction of Kerenza IV and Heimdall Station be documented, Kady resurrects AIDAN on the Mao, with the hope that, with help from Ezra, Hanna, Nik, and Nik’s hacker cousin Ella, it will compile the information. In the meantime, the adults from Heimdall have noticed that teenagers seem to be running things, and object strenuously, on the grounds that they are more qualified and have better judgement than teenagers do. AIDAN notes that there are more people on the Mao than life support is capable of supporting for the time that it will take to travel back to Kerenza IV.

Then readers get the surprise of discovering that there actually were survivors of the invasion of Kerenza IV. Not only did a significant number of the BeiTech forces end up trapped when their mobile jump platform (which could transport them to another system) was damaged, but there are still a number of miserable colonists, one of whom is Kady’s cousin Asha. When the resistance causes the deaths of the majority of techs on the planet, Asha gets a surprise– one of the replacement techs, who has been working on the jump platform, is her ex-boyfriend, Rhys, who just might be able to get a message out through BeiTech’s communications software. BeiTech is getting close to fixing its mobile jump platform, and won’t leave evidence behind, so the remaining colonists are quickly running out of time.

Horrific things happen in Obsidio. There were times I stopped breathing, or was nearly in tears. Kaufman and Kristoff do not pull their punches in describing the brutality and senselessness of war– and in this case, a war that doesn’t even attempt to disguise itself as anything else than an unapologetic attack on an economic competitor out of greed. Yet there are very few completely unsympathetic characters. What makes someone sign on to participate in a situation like this? How can someone willing to sacrifice his life for a cat command the death of innocent civilians? What makes someone whose job has been protecting others from harm lead a mutiny that ends in blood and death? Knowing that AIDAN has acted ruthlessly in the past, why does Kady keep bringing him back?

One thing that does really bother me is the way that the authors tried to humanize AIDAN. It is clear that by the end of the third book AIDAN is in love with Kady. But AIDAN, as Ella points out, is not a person, but an “it”. AIDAN’s meta-awareness is also frustrating. It somehow has realized that it is in a story and decided that “every story needs its monster”, so it will be the monster. AIDAN is the “Frankenstein” of the series, I get that, but that doesn’t need to be said over and over.

The book hangs on a million coincidences, but it does all hang together in the end. Obsidio is creative in every way, from its design and the illustrations by Marie Lu (the book is a work of art), to the storytelling through the format of a collection of emails, instant messages, maps, and other documents. It does need to be read following the first two books in order to make sense, but, as long as all three of them are, it is absolutely worth it. I recommend reading this as a hardcover, so you can appreciate the illustrations and full-page designs, but I have also heard that it is outstanding as an audiobook. Highly recommended.

Illuminae (The Illuminae Files: 01) by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2015

ISBN-13: 978-0553499117

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook, audio CD

Ezra thought his day had started out badly when his hacker girlfriend Kady dumped him, but then invading warships from a competing megacorporation destroyed his home, an illegal mining colony on Kerenza IV. Two science ships, the Hypatia and the Copernicus, survived to take on refugees, as did a single warship that happened to be within distance of Kerenza’s SOS, the Alexander. The Alexander managed to destroy three of the four attacking ships and severely wound the fourth– the ships escaped but were all badly damaged, and are now on the run from the remaining warship, the Lincoln.

Trapped on separate ships, Ezra and Kady must find a way back to working together and trusting each other as they navigate around fellow colonists who have been infected by a bioweapon that turns them into violent, paranoid cannibals; collaborate with a paranoid AI too damaged to fight off a warship without help; convince station management that they are on the right track; and somehow, save each other and as many other colonists as they can.

The first half of the book feels like miltary science fiction, with some teenage angst in the mix, and an ever-increasing sense of dread… in the second half, the AI, resurrected after it was significantly damaged and deemed dangerous, takes over a chunk of the narrative, and it is terrifying.

The story is not a traditional narrative. Much of it is told through secret IM’s, letters, transcripts of recordings, emails, and company documents. It’s framed as the evidence supporting the secret attack on Kerenza IV, presented to the United Terran Authority by a mystery organization called the Illuminae, incriminating the company responsible. There are also pages devoted to the thoughts of the AI, who seems to become more reflective as the story continues and it develops a relationship with Kady. The design of the book is incredible. It is worth picking up just to see how the words, illustrations, maps, diagrams, code, and backgrounds fit together. Pages look like you would expect them to if you were actually reading someone’s emails and documents, and pieces of the story that take place outside the ships are designed to tell the story not just in words but visually and actively through what I would describe as word paintings. There are even “countdown” pages that tell you how much time has passed and how much there is left before the Lincoln reaches the Alexander and attacks, creating a strong sense of urgency.

As long as it is, and as oddly as the narrative turns from the story focused mainly on Ezra and Kady and the human side of grief and disaster to Kady’s attempts to convert the paranoid AI from a course of violence against the people remaining in the fleet to using its power to save them from the Lincoln, this is a book I couldn’t put down. The emotions are intense, the settings are vivid, the terrors feel absolutely real. Although I found this in a middle school library, it certainly isn’t limited to the enjoyment of that audience– older teens and adults can also enjoy this book. Highly recommended.