Review: Obsidio by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Book: Obsidio
Authors: Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff
Series: The Illumine Files #3 (final)
Publisher: Knopt Books
Pages: 615
Release: March 13, 2018

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.

This glorious book was absolutely everything I expected it to be! High risks, devastation, tactical brilliance, questions of human logic and morals (supplied by our favourite mass-murderer AI), an ever-looming countdown, tons of defiance, scarce resources, unexpected deaths, and one major, epic finale.

My favourite character remained to be Kady, and we had no shortage of her in this book! Her snark and defiance had been subdued a bit, but her intelligence and will to fight were not changed. Specifically, she ended up playing a very key part of the final battle, and I'm not talking about her hacking skills--I'm talking about the title she gets, and the connotations associated with it. DANG, KADY. She was living every girl's dream, going from sassy defiant hacker to Systems Chief to something even bigger and better. Absolutely amazing.

The most intriguing character, of course, was AIDAN. He's arguably the best character in the entire series! Throughout the past few books, we've been watching him develop and grow as much as an AI can, bordering on having emotions. But AIDAN isn't human, instead ruling by extreme logical calculations, which we are reminded thoroughly of in various cases. It was just so interesting and fascinating to see how much he was able to dip into the realm of human emotions, though of course justified by logic, such as luck, triumph, self-sacrifice and love. And if you're wondering, yes, I still quasi ship Kady and AIDAN together, though I knew from the very beginning it was impossible on all fronts. Still! Their relationship is so so so good!!!

So, down on Kerenza, we get introduced to two new characters: Asha and Rhys. I will admit, I wasn't as excited about their part in the beginning of the book (the aftermath of Heimdall Station's destruction was more interesting to me, plus it easier to get into since we already knew Kady and Hanna), but they slowly grew on me. Asha wasn't anything special per se, but her sheer determination to make it out alive and keep others safe by playing it risky was extremely admirable of her. We also got to follow Rhys as he appears in a BeiTech uniform, only to be spurred by the whole situation how messed up everything is, and to struggle between duty and ethics.

Kerenza's situation was extremely bleak: all survivors were being forced to work by BeiTech, with their families being held hostage as incentive. And did I mention that they had already killed a bunch of people, and had plans to kill the rest of the survivors once they completed their work? Yeah, not exactly a walk in the park.

Now, that ending. That ending! It was better than anything I'd ever dreamed of for Kady and Hanna. And I'm not kidding--their final roles blew me away. You thought they were badass in the last books? They took that to a whole new level in this one! Basically, this finale was the most epic of epics, playing to every character's unique skill to the max with such high risks. It was amazing!!!

Overall, this book was the perfect ending, drawing on all the strings. There was no horror aspect to it unlike the last books, but the sheer driving desperation was enough to make up for it. I'm going to miss this series so much!