Obsidio

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Title: Obsidio

Author: Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Series: The Illuminae Files, #3

Publisher: Rock the Boat

Release Date: March 13th 2018

Rating:

Kady, Ezra, Hanna, and Nik narrowly escaped with their lives from the attacks on Heimdall station and now find themselves crammed with 2,000 refugees on the container ship, Mao. With the jump station destroyed and their resources scarce, the only option is to return to Kerenza—but who knows what they’ll find seven months after the invasion?

Meanwhile, Kady’s cousin, Asha, survived the initial BeiTech assault and has joined Kerenza’s ragtag underground resistance. When Rhys – an old flame from Asha’s past – reappears on Kerenza, the two find themselves on opposite sides of the conflict.

With time running out, a final battle will be waged on land and in space, heroes will fall, and hearts will be broken.

– Blurb courtesy of goodreads.com

This review may contain spoilers for previous book(s) in the series.

My Thoughts On…

…The Plot

“I know very little else.
Save
Perhaps
This:
That every story needs its monster
And that everybody deserves a second chance.
And that I
am
AIDAN.”

It’s been months since the first attack on Kerenza and while Kady and Ezra battled for their lives aboard the Alexander, while Hannah and Nik fought against the BeiTech assault team at the Heimdall way station, Asha has been struggling to get by on Kerenza. She’s part of an underground resistance who are fighting against BeiTech anyway they can, but now the Magellan is nearly repaired their changes to survive are dim.

Until Rhys arrives on the ground, and if Asha can convince him to betray BeiTech she has an opportunity to make real waves for the resistance. For the past seven months there’s been no hope for the civilians left on Kerenza. They’ve been beaten down, slaughtered, oppressed and it made Obsidio a very dark and chilling read in places where you can see the full extent of what BeiTech have done on the planet’s surface to the people there.

“If we make it out, we’ll shine a light on what BeiTech did.”
“And if we don’t?” Ella asks.
Kady looks back and forth between the girls and shrugs.
“At least our lives will have been worth dying for.”

While Asha hopes to make waves Kady, Ezra, Hanna, Nik and Ella, along with the other survivors from the Hypatia and Heimdall, start making their way back to Kerenza. However there are too many people aboard the Mao and tensions are rising between the commanders from the Hypatia and from Heimdall. Despite everything they have done no one is willing to listen to a group of teenagers, two of whom are criminals, when they are facing a battle the likes they have never fought before against the BeiTech forces remaining on Kerenza.

As much as I loved meeting Asha and Rhys and reading about the challenges they faced on Kerenza I enjoyed seeing more from Kady, Ezra, Hanna, Nik and Ella about the Mao. After everything they’ve been through their hardships aren’t over but no one is willing to give up. There was a lot to cover in Obsidio, everything the characters have been fighting against comes to a head in this last book and it made for a thrilling read. I was never sure what was going to happen or who would survive in this series with a very high death count.

…The Characters

“Kady was told her cousin Asha was dead in the same assault, her apartment destroyed in the first wave of missiles.
But here is Dead Asha Grant, holding Dead Katya Kowalska in her arms.”

Asha is not a hacker extraordinaire like her cousin Kady or an expert fighting like Hanna, before the attack she was just a pharmaceutical intern caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, unable to escape aboard either the Alexander or the Hypatia. The past seven months have been about survival for Asha, she hates BeiTech and what they’ve done but she’s never once given up hope of some kind of escape and she’s constantly fighting against BeiTech even if it’s just in small ways like sheltering another civilian in the hospital.

“That doesn’t make it right!”
“This is a war!” Oshiro roars. “‘Right’ is whatever the people who’re standing at the end say it is. ‘Right’ is decided by the people who win.”

Rhys is a foot soldier, just following orders. He’s spent the past seven months safe working aboard the Magellan, but now he’s been called to the planet’s surface and he finally sees what the people he has been working for have been doing to the civilians of Kerenza. Rhys isn’t a bad person, all he’s doing is his job, following orders from those higher up the chain of command like the rest of the soldiers on the planet, but to Asha and the rest of the people on Kerenza Rhys is the enemy and they won’t hesitate to kill him.

One aspect I really liked about Obsidio was how it made the BeiTech employees more human. In Illuminae we never got to see who Kady and Ezra were fighting against, it was simply the Lincoln, and in Gemina the assault team attacking Heimdall knew exactly what they were doing. On Obsidio however all the soldiers are doing is following orders and you can see how for some of them the atrocities they are committing weigh on them.

“But I see it now.
The answer.
A moment of clarity amid all this chaos.
I see it.
What I must do.
Where I must go.
And I am not afraid.
I am not.”

AIDAN has been severely damaged by everything that happened to it in both Illuminae and Gemina, it’s no longer the AI it was at the start of Illuminae aboard the Alexander but I loved seeing all the ways it’s changed; the way it questions itself and how loyal it is to Kady above anyone else. However despite those questions and despite that loyalty one thing about AIDAN that’s stayed the same is its drive to protect the fleet, to preserve life for the majority no matter the cost.

After everything they faced Kady, Ezra, Hanna, Nik and Ella are being pushed to one side by the adults. While Ezra and Nik are preparing for the assault against the BeiTech forces on Kerenza and Kady is working with AIDAN Ella is recovering and Hanna is left without a job to occupy her thoughts. She feels lost and with nothing essential to do, no assault forces to fight or run from the way there was on Heimdall, and the fact that she’s lost her father starts to sink in.

…The Setting

“Lindstrom glances at Oshiro, breathing hard.
The woman’s face is hidden behind her helmet.
Her voice is like iron.
Welcome to Kerenza, Cherry.”

In Illuminae we travelled through space on the Alexander and the Hypatia with Kady and Ezra, in Gemina we spent time aboard Heimdall with Hanna, Nik and Ella, but in Obsidio we go back to the planet where everything started. Kerenza is a small, out-of-the-way planet where it is always so far below freezing that people die from the cold. We never got to see Kerenza before the attack BeiTech launched, but it seems like a bleak place and what has happened has only made it bleaker. The civilians are still fighting but they are very aware of the realities of their situation, the pit where BeiTech forces disposed of the bodies of all the unessential Kerenza civilians sees to that. Obsidio doesn’t shy away from the atrocities that have been committed on Kerenza, one of the things that I think made this book a lot more darker than the previous two in the series.

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I had sky high expectations for Obsidio, it was possibly my most anticipated release for the first half of this year, and it was more than I hoped for. I loved every single page and the only bad thing about this book was the fact that it eventually had to come to an end (and that’s not to say the ending wasn’t perfect, because it really was).

What did you think of Obsidio? Was it a favourite of yours or could you just not get into the story? Let me know.