Book Review: Memento

Memento by Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff

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Title: Memento

Author: Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff

Year Published: 2019

Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers

Genre: Fiction, Sci Fi

Format: Physical

Plot: ♥♥♥♥♥

Characters: ♥♥♥♥♥

World Building: ♥♥♥♥♥

Flow: ♥♥♥♥♥

Synopsis:

December, 2574. Forty-three days before the BeiTech attack on Kerenza IV.

This is the story of my first friendship.

This is the tale of my first murder?

Some monsters are born.

But I?

< ERROR >

I was made.

Review*:

   The spoilers in this section are mostly if you have not read Illuminae or this book. If you have made it past Illuminae, you shouldn't be spoiled for the entire series. If you have no read Illuminae, do not read Memento. I don't care if it's listed as 0.5 of the series, read Illuminae first.

   I pre-ordered Aurora Rising specifically for this little book. I had plans to eventually read it, but not pre-order it. Then the evil genuis of Jay & Amie suckered me in by taunting me with AIDAN. Bastards.

   This is a tiny little book, it took me maybe an hour or two to read with a couple breaks in between. It is pre-Illuminae and the attack on Kerenza IV. We meet AIDAN as it is still developing an idea of ethics and our other main character, Olivia Klein. Olivia is a very interesting character and I love that we only get this little blurb about her. From a psychological point, she has a lot of baggage that we become familiar with very quickly. 

   Olivia's relationship with AIDAN is to try to understand humanity better. It starts by discussing the trolley problem. Olivia discusses with AIDAN about what would be the ethical thing to do given the problem presented and how she would process her decision as a human. Introducing this problem to AIDAN is crucial to what happens in the rest of the series. 

  Reading Memento made me fall back onto the fence with how I feel about AIDAN. In Illuminae and Gemina, I thought it was an amazing character that was morally grey but ultimately wanted to protect. By shining light on how it's morality had been "corrupted" or altered it makes it seem like a little bit more of a two dimensional character rather than the complex being I felt it was. It reduces AIDAN to a machine regurgitating information, which it technically is, but makes its role in the rest of the series a little more redundant.

  Although Olivia is someone we are introduced to in a short period of time, her story is actually pretty interesting. She seems like a clever girl, though she keeps colored string wrapped around her fingers and a tattoo to remind her of her father. We discover she is a bit of a hopeless romantic, loving classic literature and staying in rather than being outgoing and spontaneous. She also writes to her father who was a professor at a school, though he passed away. Throughout the story, though Olivia seems more like just an introvert with thing for her superior, we find out she does have some ghosts that haunt her. We don't realize her father has passed until her second email to him. 

  We get to the Kerenza IV attack and AIDAN as a ship being compromised, things really start to take a turn. AIDAN is not thinking as a computer should, using what I'd like to refer as "human logic" rather than computed logic to make decisions. The change in behavior makes Ethan, Olivia's previous boss and beau, concerned with the safety of others on the ship. He chooses to take AIDAN offline for the time being while they try to escape the threat of the ships following them. At this point and although denying it, AIDAN makes its choice in the real life trolley problem that is presented. This means, while trying to navigate a physically compromised part of the ship to turn AIDAN off, Ethan dies.  Olivia connects the dots fairly quickly between Ethan's death, the trolley problem, and the position AIDAN was in and confronts the computer. 

   And may I say, her death was spectacular. I know that sounds a bit grim, however I appreciate character endings that have significance. It was really well written in a satisfying way because it ties us back into Illuminae; stuck on these ships and when everything is starting to fall apart, but also brings back the trolley problem in a very blunt way. 

   Overall, I would recommend if you are able to get your hands on a copy. I'm not sure how coveted these little books will be or if we will eventually see a novella bind up with some other stories. 

*This section may contain spoilers.