Obsidio was one of my most anticipated releases for this year. I had previously listened to both Illuminae and Gemina and was easily caught up in the action of Katie, Ezra, Hannah, and Nick as they fought against Bei Tech’s forces. Obsidio wraps up their stories while giving us two new characters to root for in Asha and Rhys. A couple who lost touch with each other and ended up on opposite sides of this war.

Katie and Ezra, in Illuminae Files had escaped Kerenza, but her cousin Asha was one of those who were left behind to deal with the invading force. While working in the hospital, Katie runs into her old boyfriend Rhys, who has just landed on Kerenza from the invading spaceship Magellen, where he’s been for the last seven months. The combination of the atrocities he’s witnessing and seeing Asha who he still loves is enough for him to question what Bei Tech is doing on this planet. Is all as it appears? Meanwhile, Katie, Ezra, Hannah and Nick are on the spaceship Mao heading back towards Kerenza. Their crew is a mixture of crews from several ships and lets just say that they all don’t see eye to eye. Mix in the conflicted AIDAN, the AI computer that is malfunctioning due to his developing feelings, and the mutiny on the Bounty crew and you have an action packed novel that was really hard to not listen to from start to finish.

Since I had listened to both Illuminae and Gemina before reading, I decided to do the same thing with Obsidio. I was again amazed at the quality of the cast and the feeling that I was listening to a movie (with sound effects!) rather than a cast of narrators reading a book. This series is truly among the best when it comes to the audio quality of it’s cast. Combine that top quality cast with an emotional action novel and you get around 18 hours of fun! This was a hard novel to hit pause on for sure.

If I had one criticism, I would say that Asha and Rhys, while definitely pivotal characters in this book, seemed to also be somewhat superfluous. I had been so caught up in both Katie/Ezra and Hannah/Nick’s stories that Asha and Rhys paled in comparison. However, the climax to this book was as powerful as it was because of those two characters so I’m a little conflicted and ultimately shrugged those feelings off. AIDAN also can’t be forgotten. Bei Tech was the evil villain but AIDAN was a close second and his emotional development was fascinating. Is this really the last Illuminae Files book? The ending seemed to leave a small opening for another novel or an offshoot of this series. I hope so, these books were so much fun to listen to and read, truly innovative! ❤️❤️❤️❤️

Click this link to purchase! Obsidio (The Illuminae Files)

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