Obsidio

By Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff.

This is the sequel to Gemina and as such, the review has to go entirely below the spoiler cut. It's the conclusion to the story and it's awesome and this also gets a five star review. At the very end the authors mention that they are going to start a new trilogy and on that alone I am excited.

Here's an audio interview with the authors.

Spoiler space

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In the third and final act of the trilogy, we find out along with the survivors of Kerenza and Heimdall that there are still survivors of the mining colony alive on Kerenza. The Hypatia's not going to make it much longer, but now they've got a warship saved from the enemy that they can use to get back there in a mere seventeen days instead of another seven month trudge. Unfortunately, it's only designed to hold around a thousand people and they've got 3400 to pack on in uh...hopes they figure out something, I guess?

"Captain, the universe might have flipped on its head in the last forty-eight hours, but I know we're not taking orders from a couple of teenagers."

"As captain of this ship, I'm taking advice from anyone I think  can provide it, and I'll thank you to treat everyone present with respect, Chief Garver."

Added difficulty level: the highest ranking guy on Heimdall, Ben Garver, is shut out from command by the Hypatia crew (as the captain points out, this guy didn't even notice he had infiltrators on Heimdall and he was the security head) and HOO BOY IS HE EVER REALLY REALLY CHEESED OFF ABOUT THAT. He's one of those noxious fucks who wants to throw his power around and is super super mad that nobody is RESPECTING HIS AUTHORITAE and letting him into power on the ship. Captain Boll is literally too busy to meet with her own team, much less deal with this guy's concerns and nagging. While we're shown that he has good intentions--he is shown caring about his dead friend's wife and kid--he's obvious trouble brewing.

And he and the Heimdall folks really, really don't like that teenagers like Kady and Ezra are being put in charge of things. Poor "Lieutenant Babyface" Ezra in particular is the only trained pilot on board and is the only option to train anyone to use the fighter ships on board, but the barely-have-any-experience folks he has to train are acting like assholes because how dare a kid tell them anything? This made me want to go, "Y'all, even Ezra acknowledges this, but WHO THE HELL ELSE DO YOU HAVE THAT'S BETTER THAN HIM RIGHT NOW?" Ezra also makes friends with Nik because he needs someone who can shoot, which goes against the captain's edict saying to leave a Russian mob member out of this stuff. 

Kady activates AIDAN into the ship, and unfortunately, well... let's just say that AIDAN takes matters regarding how many folks can survive on the ship into its own hands, making everyone miserable. ("Am I not merciful?")  Yes, that's horrible. But also....it's not like anyone had any better suggestions? Even though folks knew this is the kind of thing AIDAN does by now, there's still the dilemma of needing its assistance...while knowing that at the very least, AIDAN will do whatever it can to save Kady. 

Anyway, between all the drama on the ship, it looks dicey as to who's even going to survive to make it back to Kerenza. 

The BeiTech thugs have been stranded on Kerenza for seven months, having taken enough damage on all of their tech stuff so that they haven't been able to use their mobile jump gate to just leave. So they've eliminated all except "essential" personnel and are forcing the miners to keep on mining by locking up their families. Of course nobody on Kerenza believes the total lies that anyone will be saved, and they know they're gonna die the second the gate works again. So naturally there's a stealth resistance going on trying to slow things down unnoticeably while hoping anyone comes to their aid. One of the resistance members is Kady's cousin Asha, a pharmacy tech who's one of the few medical people left alive. She's a former party girl who got forcibly moved to Kerenza after she started dating a bad boy, got stabbed in a bar fight, and missed her sister's death. Imagine Asha's shock when that bad boy ex turns up on Kerenza...as a BeiTech soldier. This leads to a huge ethical dilemma for her because the best thing to do would be to convert him to their side....

Rhys Lindstrom, the aforementioned ex, got thrown in military school after things went south and now he's a tech specialist for BeiTech. He's been kept in space for seven months but enough techs have been killed on the surface that he's gotten a mandatory transfer to the surface. Rhys has had no idea how awful things are down there, and his new squadmates are casually callous (mostly) about the atrocities they've been forced to do, like slaughtering civilians and even the kids. The poor dude is gobsmacked, but learns to cover it up--he earns the nickname "Hustler" for his card game skills, but that's useful in other areas. He's delighted to find his love Asha again and suffice it to say he's susceptible to many enticements--but can they survive this hellhole? Even though Asha and Rhys get a bit of short shrift now that everyone's in the story, I do always like a good exes-reunite story. (Y'know, if your ex doesn't turn out to be an asshole.) "Of all the conquered mining colonies on all the planets in all the universe, you walked into mine," right? 

"How...how do you deal with it?"

"The same way soldiers have been dealing with it since the beginning of time, Hustler. (bleep) your pants, then dive in and swim. It's not like you've got any other choice." -Rhys and Duke

Eventually, there's a big ol' conflict. You know at least some survive enough for the trial so you know folks will get out of it, but seeing how...wow. This series is powerful all the way through. 

I do give the authors credit for humanizing even the bad guys. Garver has his moments. We see the conflicts that at least some BeiTech folks have. Even one total asshole literally saves a cat at one point because while he might murder all over the place, he still likes animals. And the page in which the deaths of three BeiTech soldiers is mentioned with remarks about how one of them wanted to study theater and another was keeping records of the atrocities to report back...whoa. 

 Quote/Commentary Corner: (note: I refuse to type as AIDAN does with the random caps) 

• "The Illuminae Group saved two universes from annihilation in a hyperspatial paradox event, but we're not miracle workers." -Hanna
• "I've watched this on slo-mo a dozen times, and I swear you can count twenty-seven different expressions on Lindstrom's face in a three-second period as he sees this girl." -Analyst 7213-0089-DN
• There is a series of e-mails in which Yulin Zhang, "Head of Engineering, Chief Punster," gets annoyed that everyone is ignoring their jokes about scuttlebutt. "Yulin, we're hoping that if we ignore it, it will go away." -Kady. 
• I enjoyed all of the jokes about Rhys's naturally poofy hair (which you can finally see for yourself at the very end of the book in an adorable drawing of the Big Seven). People ask how he does it and he perennially has no answer. 
• The secret message board for the resistance is quite something. Carter's birthday is one giant "aww" of sad. Raise a glass, I'll see you on the other side. Hamilton is everywhere. 
• Nik and Ella on chat while she razzes him about Hanna: "having seen an alternate reality version of you literally die in my arms about 38 hours ago, you'd think I'd be kinder disposed to you rite now. but god I hate u." Ella: "filthy lies, u luv me like cigarettes." 
• From a transcript of a conversation between Syra Boll and Winifred McCall, when McCall overhears Boll saying "Christ, don't just jam it in there. You've got to warm it up first." McCall is all, "My god, I was having flashbacks to high school for a minute there." 
• AIDAN's sense of humor is not appreciated by others. Nik being fucked with in particular is rather perverse. "I have learned that people do not find my modes of humor particularly amusing." 
• Poor Nik can't make any jokes about being "the one and only" any more. 
• Nik wonders when Hanna is going to come to her senses and see what everyone else sees in him. Ezra is all, "The guy who saved two universes?"
• "nah, I'm genuinely overjoyed a mass-murdering artificial intelligence is cracking my secure channels for a midnight chit n chat." -Ella to AIDAN. Which is when she finds out that she could literally kill it with sarcasm. 
• The "Family Day" photo on page 228 shows hands being held, but the text below says nobody is allowed to touch each other. Ouch! 
• Even AIDAN can't kill a baby named after Hypatia. 
• "Because as I write up all this footage, the one thing getting clearer and clearer is that just about everyone I see is doing the best they can with what they have." -Analyst 7213-0089-DN
• "u done? or u wanna jerk off a little about whether you can die when you're not even alive and blah mozart blah chess [insert masturbatory literary allusion here] oh (bleep) I just killed another thousand people whooooops." -Ella to AIDAN
• "You can always trust me to be me." -AIDAN
• Analyst 7213-0089-DN notes as he's been watching all these files that he's gotten a little used to watching girls who are stupid good at what they do, but Asha is a regular person caught up in a bad situation. "So I think out of every person in these files, that makes her the bravest." 
• Isaac Grant is everyone's super nice dad who bucks everyone up. AWWW. He writes everyone a very nice note and even makes sure Mr. Biggles is moved within Ella's line of sight. "Clearly they don't understand he's integral to your creative process. We're surrounded by idiots." 
• Ella to Nik: "The day you came to Heimdall was the day my life turned around. I make the best of what I got, but what I got started to get a whole lot bigger when you arrived." 
• "Nik, are you still wearing that (bleep)ing parachute? You know you're gonna be flying in space, right..." -Ella
• "There's a billion different versions of you out there, in a trillion different universes. And I still can't get over how lucky I am that, out of all of those versions, you're the one that's mine." -Nik to Hanna.
• "Every story needs its villain. And its hero. And its monster." -AIDAN
• Great use of spider technique, Ella!
• Nik and Ezra: "Chum, if you're offended by "Babyface," you might wanna skip reading the surveillance footage reports I've been compiling for the Illuminae Files. Just sayin'." "....Why, what did you call me in those?" "Ignorance is bliss, chum." 
• Analysit 7213-0089-DN again: "Michelle Dennis is just a girl, but in this moment, she's saved every one of her comrades in arms. In this moment, she's both ordinary and extraordinary. Just like everyone in this story." 

Clearly I just love the heck out of this trilogy. It's so very, very, very, very good. A (bleep)ing delight to read. I love the main heroes of the Illuminae Group so much. 

There's more I have to say about the end, so I'll put that behind another spoiler space discussion cut:

Discussion time!

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So I've been wondering who "Analyst 7213-0089-DN" is through the whole thing. I was pretty convinced it was Ezra due to the tons of snark and the frequent use of the word "chum," but in the end it turns out it's Niklas. Uh, mostly...it's implied that some of the Illuminae Group added in romantic bits. And another analyst (that's not AIDAN, who covered some scenes in Gemina but that's obvious) turns up, 7213-0094-DN, which I think is Ella. 

"Speaking of literary criticism, which one of you barbarians made those charming additions to my surveillance footage?...Don't give me that. All those extra bits with the kissing, and describing how my shirt stretched over my (bleep)ing muscles. Now I look like the kind of guy who writes about my own gun show." 

I enjoyed the fakeout with Garver toward the end. Good job there. "Bait and Switch," hah. 

Did that cat on Kerenza get saved and adopted? Looks like it from the back picture, but I wouldn't put it so close to Mr. Biggles. Just saying.

I looooooove the end drawing of the cast, but I do wish poor Hanna didn't have her face split in the crease. 

I'm not sure what to make of the reveal that Bruno, a guy who's been going on about how he believes that he and Jenna will be reunited again since he thinks she made it off on one of the ships, suddenly mentions that he's known since a month after the invasion that Jenna was dead because he saw her body in the day care center. That seemed...weird. Did someone change that at the last minute? Especially since after I reread it, there was a mention of a Jenna in Ezra's list of flight recruits. Sad fakeout. 

Happy fakeout: Ezra and Nik do not die, thanks to Chekhov's Parachute. But by that point you pretty much figured they hadn't died.

The courtroom scene: Kady and Nik came in disguise. Her with brown hair and him with a mustache the judge does not love. Ella acts like it's her Oscar speech. And finally..."I recognize Miss Asha Grant from her file photo and Mr. Rhys Lindstrom from his haircut." BWAHAHAHAH. 

The end is very...schwarma :) 

As for the acknowledgements: Quote Corner for that too...

• "Mum, I've got to get off the phone. An e-mail's just come in from my spaceship designer." 
• "We hope you are never suffocated in your sleep by a mass-murdering artificial intelligence monologuing about the nature of good and evil." 
• "May you never be forced to wait in a closet holding your severed tongue while your fem gets rid of her parents."
• "May you never be classified as nonessential when the invaders start digging the Hole."
• "May you never have a thousand tons of rock and ice collapse on your heads for your fifty-second-birthday present." 
• "May you never be assigned to planetside duty with a thousand genocidal invaders and one very angry ex-girlfriend."
• "May you never be shot by an irate former chief of security with a Napoleon complex."