YMMV / The Illuminae Files

• Badass Decay: AIDAN throughout the trilogy. Justified in that coming Back from the Dead consecutively weakens him, so he goes from being able to fight four dreadnoughts at once to having to sacrifice himself to destroy just one.
• Broken Base: The ending of the third book. Were all the protagonists living an unrealistically happy outcome for such a dark series, or a well-deserved Earn Your Happy Ending?
• Complete Monster: _02: Gemina: Lt. Travis J. Falk is the sociopathic leader of the audit team sent by BeiTech to take control of the jump station Heimdall to ensure there are no witnesses to their atrocities on Kerenza IV. In his very first scene, Falk and his team seize control of the station and quickly murder Hanna Donnely's father for being the commander of the station. Falk then sends out his men to hunt down and kill any stragglers they find while forcing the station's engineers to reactivate the wormhole so BeiTech can send a drone fleet to wipe out the fleeing Kerenza survivors before he executes all of the non-essential personnel. Falk then tries to manipulate Hanna into turning herself in by falsely claiming that her partner Nik is a child-killer and that he will spare her. When this doesn't work, Falk responds by flushing all 57 people in the habitat section into space and threatens to flush other sections as well. Falk then has his men rig the station's reactor to explode after they leave to kill everyone on board to ensure there are no surviving witnesses.
• Evil Is Cool: AIDAN is beloved by readers, who consider him deep and compelling but still acknowledge that he's a monster.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Kady's official Love Interest is her ex-ex-boyfriend Ezra, but fans prefer her with AIDAN instead.
• Fanfic Fuel: What became of Universe B's Kady, AIDAN, Ezra, Asha, Rhys, and all the Kerenza IV refugees? Their Heimdall and Mao would still have been safe for them, but would they have been able to stop BeiTech from liquidating the rest of the colony without Hanna, Nik, and Ella? It's understandable why we never find out, but one can't help but wonder.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • The series opens with this being crossed. BeiTech has its share of sympathetic people, but that doesn't excuse their higher-ups, who attempt to murder everyone on Kerenza IV for the crime of existing. Kady sums it up best:
    Kady: You discover an illegal mining op run by one of your competitors. Do you (a) report it to the UTA and laugh as the fines roll in, or (b) jump in an attack fleet and X-out every man, woman and child on the planet? What the hell was BeiTech thinking?
  • Discussed a lot in regards to AIDAN. There's likely at least one thing he's done that would be considered this, and most of the characters think he's crossed the line at some point. However, AIDAN himself doesn't know whether he's good or evil or if they even apply to him, and Kady holds that he deserves a second chance to the very end.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: It's marketed as young adult literature and opens with attempted planetary genocide. The rest of the series includes graphic fight scenes, terrorist attacks, an inhumane occupation, and Black-and-Gray Morality, with protagonists ranging from the drug-dealing Nik to the mass-murdering AIDAN.

---