Hello Readers! Welcome back again to the series that turns out become the most chapters so far that i have in my blog : "Is It Worth Reading?" series which dedicated to novellas and companion books, a short review for a short book. As always in this series will rate if it worth your time to read this or just skip it ahead to save your time cuz it has nothing to do with the plot in the main story of the series. Yes you guessed it already, this is the novella from the Illuminae Files series by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff. Let's dive in!

All in summary is talking about AIDAN in Alexander-78V fleet is still learning about humanism and their behavior. The story start with the main character Olivia Klein being officially accepted as private 1st class in Alexander and will work with AIDAN as neurogramming team under Ethan Wolf.

Working side by side with AIDAN that still learning about "speaking gently" its actions are still calculative in comparison with who it is in the first book of the series. And of course, the battle in Kerenza IV where it got some damages that lead it to who it is in the end.

Is It Worth Reading?

 At first AIDAN refers itself as AIDAN not I, but after the hit from BeiTech's dreadnoughts, it changed. In Momento, we found how robotic AIDAN is, about its objectives for the safety of the Alexander Fleet and the crew, which kind of explaining why it decided to do what it has done in the first book

"It’s like being an ant working with a giant who refers to itself in the third person. Its devotion is wholly and solely to the safety of the Alexander and its crew, but at the same time, it feels like the crew are just insects to it and if it wasn’t careful, it could just step on us all by mistake. Thank the stars for the behavior protocols they’ve got on it. I honestly don’t know what it could do if they actually let it off the leash."
― Olivia Klein ―

The main characters in this book tho, made me grab my illuminae again to see if i missed them in the first book, but turns out not. They indeed are new characters that didn't mentioned in the first book, which lead to answers why, because they're dead already in the first book (sorry for spoilers but it is what it is) and why? because of the analogy about trolley problem, killing one to save five others that Olivia gave to AIDAN to :

"Demonstrates how morality is subjective. How under certain circumstances, even murder can be construed as ‘the right thing to do.’ ”
― Olivia Klein ―

 

Which lead to how scary an AI can be if it lost its behavior protocols, how dangerous AI is if it took control. By the end of the book, i can finally feel "this is how Jay Kristoff's books feels like" because of how brutal the truth is. 

 

My Verdict

 Read it! absolutely recommend you to read it, it explains a lot of "why"s of AIDAN behavior from what it learned in this story that made it decided a lot of things in the next book. And of course made you shiver a bit by how creepy it is, and specially for the plot twist. 

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