"A computer will perform a takeoff or landing with all the grace of a person. It is only for combat - only for the artistry of ruin - that these vessels have pilot seats at all anymore. There is something in humanity more suited to the mechanics of murder that any machine yet devised."

I was fully expecting to struggle with this book, because I’ve never read something written entirely in a mixed-media format before. I’d seen snippets of it in other books, but never 600 whole pages of it.

Suffice it to say that I did not struggle, and this was absolutely FANTASTIC.

I firmly believe that if this book had been written in any other method, it would not have been as impactful or successful at what it does. The way the story unfolds is masterful, and the fact that the reader is forced to puzzle the events together by parsing through what are effectively hundreds of pages of messages, e-mails, transcripts of audio files and official documents is very satisfying!

The plot is equally compelling as it is complex, but again, what gives the story its heart are all the characters you meet, and you can’t help but root for our main love(r)s Kady and Ezra throughout it all. They were just kids forced into a way they didn’t sign up for, but they both step up to the plate and are incredibly resilient. I’ll always have a soft spot for characters who not only are able to persevere in the face of horrible odds, but also challenge authority and stick it to the man when it matters the most. I will just tell you this, when Ezra was presumed dead and we realized that Aidan was the one talking to Kady and luring her to the Alexander? I may have teared up 😭

Speaking of characters - surprisingly, or rather not surprisingly at all, the most compelling of them all ended up being AIDAN. To go back to Osamu Dazai, what we do with our time here on this tiny planet is try and figure out how to be and become human. How to feel, how to think, how to have a moral compass, how to be part of a society of fellow meat suits who are trying to figure all of that out just as much as you are. And that’s exactly what AIDAN is trying to do, as well (albeit in their rather misguided, sometimes slightly homicidal ways). Thousands of human beings have been placed in their care, and their first instinct, the one they’ve learned from observing all the other people who have walked their corridors and gave them orders, is to protect. At all costs. To me, AIDAN is a wonderful display of humanity themselves because of this. Their understanding is still incomplete (at all costs, but to what lengths?), but I think that we’ll see more of them in the following books, since we have confirmation that they were able to rebuild themselves - perhaps we’ll see them grow even better, too.

Finally, it would be a complete oversight on my part not to mention that reading this during a global pandemic caused by a virus that can be very easily transmitted and has potentially deadly consequences (😄) is its completely different cup of tea. Again, I don’t think this story would have had this big of an impact of me if I did not know exactly what it’s like to live through something like this. Add our characters being - literally - not on earth, but confined to ships in outer space, and the sense of danger, of foreboding, of never knowing who is safe and who isn’t, of masks and hygiene regulations and botched quarantines (we’d know a thing or two about those), and it’s just... you feel it so much more. You know from personal experience how it feels, and the effect that it can have on people. And that’s not something I can say for a lot of other books.

I loved this way more than I expected to, and honestly, I’m very pleasantly surprised with how well my reading year has been going so far! I will be picking the next installments up as soon as they arrive - and I can’t wait to see more of the story, more of the files Kady got her hands on, and BeiTech’s downfall 👏🏻