Obsidio
By: Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff
Grade: B-/B
On the one hand yeah, I finished Obsidio, knocking off another series on my list! Whoo-hoo! On the other hand after completing the Illuminae Series I can’t help but feel I prefer the unstable morally questionable AI to any of the humans.
Yep.
Aidan over anyone.
After Gemina I also couldn’t help but feel there were some real comparisons to Kaufman and Megan Spooners previous trilogy at least in terms of story and structure. Three books. Three teenage couples. All of them have some issue in the relationship. Space. Corporate malfeasance of some sorts. Questionable parent. Snark. All of them coming together in the last book.
Oh my God, the sarcasm.
Don’t get me wrong I loved the format of all three books. Marie Lu has some beautiful illustrations in this one especially. I thought that the pacing and action in this was actually really good. It kept a good amount between Kerenza where there’s a resistance going on and our rag-tag band of survivors of the last two books that need to get back in order to jump to safety.
There was also a really sweet moment with a parent trying to parent everyone- I don’t want to give too much away! It was nice. 🙂
Also there were some pretty good scenes of occupation style war in here. Including suicide bombings and the shooting of a child so keep that in mind if you think it’s something that may bother you.
I just felt like story wise it fell back into absolutely everything I expected. Sarcasm. The most specialist of kids ever. There’s another fake out death (although at least here I thought there was a better reason for survival in this case) and one that probably should have died.
And this might be picky but the constant blacked out swear words got on my nerves. You would think the legal proceedings would have said okay, we’ll give you 50% of the swears words if you cut the snark. But that’s just me.
I still loved Aidan though he was in it what seemed considerably less than the last two books and he’s also involved in another issue I had with the Aidan vs. Humans/ Monster thing they kind of had going on.
Spoilers:
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It’s made clear and seemingly accepted by everyone that with the amount of people on the new ship they’re going to run out of everything before they even make it back to where they need to be. Special children being special have no idea what to do about this so… Aidan acts.
He narrows down the survivors and our humans are horrified (gasp!) albeit rightfully.
But it’s never addressed what they would have done. So when everyone wants to string him up and a furious Kady shuts him down Aidan was always willing to accept this. Later on in the book however another moral dilemma arises when Kady, after thinking Ezra’s dead (again), decides she’s going to take her ship and all the survivors on it and blow up a war ship threatening them.
Now this happens super quick I grant you and Kady is probably right. No choice, they’re going to die anyway but it’s not like she puts it up for debate besides to her staff. (Yes, that’s right Kady’s running the ship at this point.) It’s a great moral question all around but I just felt like the book made it like Aidan=Bad, Kady=Good. It would have been nice at least if they had recognized Aidan did make some of those decisions to keep them alive while keeping their hands clean.
But that’s just my opinion. Obsidio and the Illuminae Files did actually give me a lot to think about so that’s a winner but I just wish it had been as fresh of a story as presentation. I don’t think the last two books ever really reached the level of the first.
Recommend: Overall, yes. The formatting makes the book and I’ve heard people praise the audiobook as well. But after having completed the series I’m not sure I would have continued on after Illuminae.