Obsidio

By: Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff

Warning: the following synopsis contains spoilers from Illuminae & Gemina

Kady, Ezra, Hanna, Nik, and Ella have all managed to narrowly escape the attack on Heimdall Station. Now crammed among several thousand refugees aboard the Mao with no way back to the core, the group must return to where their journey began, Kerenza IV. But seven months have passed, and they don’t know if anyone on the icy planet has been left alive.

Meanwhile, Kady’s cousin Asha survived the initial BeiTech assault and has been recruited as a nurse treating the BeiTech soldiers as well as civilians. Running on little food and even less sleep, Asha joined the underground resistance that has been combatting the insurgency every way they can. They know their time is running out, and soon BeiTech will have enough Hermium to fuel their jump station and return to the core. A final battle must be waged not just for those still who have survived but to ensure the universe knows the story of the innocent dead.

Even from my experience reading the first two novels and knowing that the authors enjoy tricking the reader, I still got served twice. This was a fine ending to the crazy dossier style trilogy. While the first book was ultimately my favorite, Obsidio had some shining moments that I will remember. The ending was bittersweet but not totally surprising. This is a YA series after all.

Obsidio beat Gemina in raw emotion and high stakes, but not by much. Really the whole series was pretty good, and I would recommend it to sci-fi fans (as long as they don’t mind that lousy teen angst). At least Obsidio toned down the romantic drama a bit to focus on the more serious issue of genocide. That was something, I guess.

My one issue with the story is that many of the pieces were contingent on the “bad guys” being predictable. Assumptions are always a dangerous gambit and one I feel could only work out so well in fiction. There is no way, even with AIDAN, that the plan could work out how it did. But sometimes we must suspend our belief in order to enjoy a story as it unfolds, so do that and enjoy it.

Overall rating: 4.2

P.S. AIDAN is still my favorite character as it/he is the most complex of all the protagonists. Ella and Kady are second and third respectively.