Saturday, March 17, 2018

Review: Obsidio

Title: Obsidio
Author: Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff
Publisher: Knopf BFYR
Release Date: 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.


If you follow me on twitter or instagram, you may know I got my hands on a copy of Obsidio early. Yes, bookstores have had it out early. No, I'm not going to talk about the ethics of buying books before they're officially on sale. That's a topic for another day. Especially when the book of topic isn't Obsidio, one of my most anticipated reads of all 2018.

So Obsidio is fairly different from Gemina and Illuminae. It takes place mostly aboard the Mao, where the residents of the Heimdall have fled to, and where the residents of the Hypatia now are, as the Hypatia is pretty much a piece of ⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️. But we also take place half in the Kerenza IV colony with some of the survivors of the initial attack and some of the soldiers occupying the planet as they race to get mobile jump platform Magellan back online.

Every story needs its monster.

AIDAN is so very AIDAN, and he's willing to do the dirty work. To be the bad guy that people hate just to save everyone.

We're introduced to a few new people down on Kerenza IV. And one of the things I especially liked about Obsidio was that we got to know some of the BT people. They weren't nameless and faceless enemies. They were people with backstories who were caught up in ⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️ they didn't necessarily agree with, but they had to follow orders. They were men and women, just like those in the Kerenza IV colony. And they were all just trying to survive, to do the best they could with what they had.

So Amie and Jay go for a lot of shock factors again this time. I'm not going to say I was never surprised, but after Illuminae, I was on high alert. And so I guessed a lot of what happened. What can I say? I'm magic when it comes to predicting books. 

(It's true though, people hate reading books along with me because I always figure out what's going to happen. #sorrynotsorry)

And now, because I have some spoilery thoughts, I will put them in white so you can't see them without really trying. 

Syra Boll deserved what she got. When you're the captain of a ship and refuse to listen to what anyone else says, you deserve a mutiny. When you refuse to hear reason about why others aren't playing well together, you deserve a mutiny. When you refuse to understand why the entire population is upset and dying and the AI is going to kill them, perhaps you deserve to die. Because you don't understand how leadership works.

Garver pissed me off about not taking orders from a kid. I was reminded very much of Slaughterhouse Five, as its alternate title is The Children's Crusade in an allusion to the fact that wars are fought by children and not adults.

I totally called that Ezra and Nik were alive. It was pretty obvious what with the fact that Nik was still transcribing videos.

I was told there were five big deaths, but I only really counted two? Syra and AIDAN? Am I missing people? Because I was shocked at the low death count. 

Overall
Definitely a grand finale to a grand series. If you're prone to crying, you might want to have some tissues with you.

4.5 stars

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