open/close all folders
Main Characters
Kady Grant
“Most people would say I’m pretty cold, but I think of it more as…private. People are always saying “how are you?” to each other, and I guess I don’t see why I should answer such a personal question for just anyone.”
Playful Hacker and The Smart Guy of their Five-Man Band.- Action Survivor: Kady's very good at thinking on her feet; otherwise, she wouldn't have made it off Kerenza IV, much less lived through the Phobos-driven mob in Illuminae.
- Affectionate Nickname: 'Kades', as used by her family and Ezra.
- Ambiguous Situation: Her response to AIDAN's Love Confession in Obsidio? "AIDAN, I—". Then the Churchill blows up. He keeps his survival secret and we never learn what she would have said.
- Anti-Hero: Of the Knight in Sour Armor variety.
- Broken Bird: She was said to be relatively social before the Kerenza IV bombing. Several months later, she's become withdrawn and cynical.
- Deadpan Snarker: Sarcasm is a weapon she wields well and frequently, as made apparent in one of her early lines.Interviewer: How was [the evacuation]?
Kady: All kittens and rainbows. Apart from the screaming and explosions. - Defrosting Ice Queen: She's coldly hostile to most everyone from the moment she meets them in Illuminae. As their escapades pile up, she becomes less guarded and more comfortable with being vulnerable, something Ezra once describes as her not being good at. This is particularly true for Ezra and AIDAN.
- Enemy Mine: Teams up with AIDAN roughly three-fourths through Illuminae to save the Hypatia from the Lincoln. The experience actually makes Kady go from hating him to his Only Friend.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She's snappish, undermines authority, and can be arrogant at times. She's also dedicated to saving lives in a moral manner, bringing BeiTech to justice, and has damn good reasons for being so prickly.
- Knight in Sour Armor: Despite her cynicism and distrust of authority, Kady cares strongly about protecting lives and bringing BeiTech to justice.
- Morality Pet: For AIDAN.
- Revenge: Her desire to bring BeiTech's atrocities to light is partially for justice, and partially out of sheer hate.
- Sour Outside, Sad Inside: For the first half of Illuminae, Kady's short-tempered and mouthy, and can even come off as paranoid in her distrust for the Alexander's chain of command. It masks the pain and fear she's bottling up over the Uncertain Doom of her family and the trauma of seeing her homeworld bombed.
- Teen Genius: She's referred to as a prodigy with computers, with an IQ of "only" 147.
Ezra Mason
"You deserve every star in the galaxy laid out at your feet and a thousand diamonds in your hair. You deserve someone who'll run with you as far and as fast as you want to. Holding your hand, not holding you back."
The Lancer to Kady and an Ace Pilot. Also her ex-boyfriend.- Abusive Parents: Mentions he and his dad fled to Kerenza IV to get away from his mother. Additionally, the circular scars on his arms suggest she would burn him with cigarettes. And that's before you learn she's the director of BeiTech.
- Ace Pilot: Despite his relative newness to piloting—he's only been training for six months—he excels at the controls, "dancing" through the battlefield.
- Catchphrase: He tells Kady "as you wish" quite often.
- Deadpan Snarker: Not as much as Kady, but he responds to idiotic questions with snark mocking their idiocy.
- Revenge: Like Kady, he despises BeiTech for their massacre of Kerenza IV.
- Sad Clown: Plays up the act of being an independent jokester to mask his pain.
- You're Not My Father: Refuses to consider his mother as such anymore or speak to her.
Hanna Donnelly
"You might only get one shot. So shoot."
The Big Guy and the Action Girl, but that doesn't make her any less of a fashionista.- Contrasting Sequel Main Character: Whereas Kady is an aloof Playful Hacker, Hanna's a social Action Girl. Kady is a refugee fleeing with her mother, Hanna is a "princess" by virtue of her father being the Heimdall's commander. Also, Hanna's father dies, Kady's lives.
- Daddy's Girl: Is very close to her father, who taught her much of her combat and strategy skills.
- Genius Bruiser: While she looks like a vapid rich girl, Hanna is anything but. Not only has she trained in martial arts all her life, she's also honed excellent tactical skills from playing chess with her father, a military commander. Both were at his insistence so his daughter could take care of herself, which turns out to be very handy.
- Girly Bruiser: She can kick butt, but also is almost obsessed with fashion.
- Single Woman Seeks Good Man: While it almost seems like she has a thing for bad boys, it is actually the opposite. She only starts to really like Nik once he shows his softer side, and instantly turns on Jackson when his true allegiance is revealed.
Niklas Malikov
A fast-talking drug-dealer who often flirts with Hanna.
- Amazon Chaser: The fact that Hanna could kick his ass ten ways from Saturday does not deter his attraction to her in the slightest.
- Anti-Hero: He's a drug-dealer from a family of crime lords. What do you expect? Still, he's got a good heart underneath all the grit.
- Big Brother Instinct: She's just his cousin, but he's very protective of Ella. Also, he confessed to his brother's crime of murder to spare him from going to jail.
- Tattooed Crook: He is full of ink, indicating that he did his share of jail time. This includes angel wings on his neck, indicating that he did time for homicide, but this was a false confession to protect his younger brother.
Ella Malikova
Niklas's cousin and the second Playful Hacker of the group.
- Daddy's Girl: Her father wasn't what could be called a good person, but he adored his daughter. Ella describes how he paid for the best treatment when she caught the lysergia plague and refused to leave her side.
- Don't You Dare Pity Me!: She hates being pitied for her disability. Her body may not be strong, but she's very strong in spirit, and pity spits on that, as far as she's concerned.
- Genius Cripple: Ella is an incredibly skilled hacker, capable of going toe-to-toe with professional military hackers and winning while she is barely capable of moving on her own and needs constant medical treatment.
- Little Miss Snarker: She's the youngest of the group at 15 and also the most sarcastic.
- Mafia Princess: Her father is one of the heads of the House of Knives, a universe-spanning crime syndicate.
- Missing Mom: She dearly loves her father, but no mention is made of her mother.
- Teen Genius: Right up there with Kady in terms of hacking ability, but Ella's even younger than her.
- Tattooed Crook: Averted despite being a member of the House of Knives by blood, Nik uses this to point out that she is too smart to get caught.
- Voice of the Resistance: Takes up this role for the Heimdall during BeiTech's occupation of it.
Asha Grant
“But Asha Grant isn't a hacker wizard like her cousin. She's not a kung fu expert.She's not particularly brilliant at anything. She's a ***ing pharmacy intern, chum.Just a regular person like you. An ordinary person caught up in a really *** situation.So I think, out of every person in these files, that makes her the bravest.”
Kady's cousin, who was presumed dead in the bombing of Kerenza IV. Survived and became a part of La Résistance.- Badass Normal: Other people in the series are expert hackers, incredible pilots, or trained killers, and she's... a pharmaceutical tech turned nurse.
- Former Teen Rebel: When she started dating Rhys, she began participating in the same activities he did. This included playing hooky, mouthing off to her family, and sneaking off to clubs. Her parents eventually sent her to Kerenza IV to get her life in order, which she now has.
- My Greatest Failure: Her greatest regret in life is being off partying when her little sister died. This motivates her to protect Katya.
Rhys Lindstrom
A BeiTech technician and Asha's ex-boyfriend.
- Former Teen Rebel: He was the one who got Asha into rebellious behavior such as skipping school and drugs. His dad sent him to military camp, which got him straightened out.
- Heel–Face Turn: Makes one when he defects to Asha and the rebels.
- Non-Action Guy: While he is still a soldier, he is a tech first. This winds up being a source of conflict with his fellow soldiers.
- Only Sane Man: In the whole BeiTech occupation force on Kerenza, Rhys is the only one who realizes that enslaving and genociding innocent civilians is wrong, no matter how many lame excuses are made (such as claiming that they deserve to die because the colony is illegal).
- Running Gag: His always-perfectly coifed hair, no matter what increasingly absurd or dangerous situations he's in.
AIDAN
“Numbers do not feel. Do not bleed or weep or hope. They do not know bravery or sacrifice. Love and allegiance. At the very apex of callousness, you will find only ones and zeros.”
The "Artificial Intelligence Defense Analysis Network" and AI behind the Alexander. Goes rogue early in Illuminae.- Ambiguous Gender: On the one hand, it speaks with a sexless voice and is usually referred to as "it". On the other, AIDAN's name is male, and in several of his internal reflections, compares himself to a man.
- Back from the Dead: Due to having a self-repairing program that restores him from "a single seed", AIDAN pulls this quite often. Even his last Heroic Sacrifice doesn't stick.
- Cannot Tell a Joke: AIDAN gets humor, but as several characters note, absolutely sucks at joking.
- Catchphrase:
- "Am I not merciful?" in Illuminae. He drops it afterwards.
- <Error> whenever he lies or is faced with something he doesn't comprehend.
- "As you wish" to Kady, which he borrows from Ezra.
- Character Development: His feelings for Kady and philosophical musings are pretty central to the books, as they gradually turn him more human and less confident of the rightness of his actions.
- The Friend Nobody Likes: No one is happy to have him around after Illuminae, save Kady.
- Grew Beyond Their Programming: He slowly becomes more human over the course of the series. Compare his dismissive and justifying attitude towards the deaths he causes in the first book to his genuine regret over killing the refugees in the third book.
- Heel–Face Revolving Door: Appears to be going through this from the point of view of the human characters. In reality, his goals never actually change, but the actions he takes to achieve them vary wildly on the moral spectrum.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Goes down with both the Alexander and the Churchill at two separate points to save the fleet. He survives both them, but keeps his survival secret after the latter and submits himself to self-imposed exile.
- I Am a Monster: After wrestling with moral quandaries for half of Obsidio, AIDAN openly acknowledges that he's a monster and is afraid of it. But it's a mantle he'll embrace so no one else has to.
- I Did What I Had to Do: How he justifies destroying the Copernicus, killing the Alexander's command, and murdering two thousand refugees. It's morally reprehensible, but if he hadn't done it, even more people would have died.
- I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: At the end of Obsidio, he keeps his survival secret from Kady out of the belief she'll be happier without him.
- Love Makes You Evil: And crazy. It's hard-wired into his coding to protect the fleet, and he will, by any means necessary.
- Love Redeems: At the same time, he will always act in the best interest of the fleet, meaning he'll go from shooting down the Copernicus to sacrificing himself, twice. His feelings for Kady also play a pivotal role in his development.
- Pet the Dog:
- Offers to give a message to Torrence's wife and child before killing him.
- At one point in the first book, he shuts off the security cameras to let Kady cry in peace.
- Before he kills two thousand of the refugees aboard the Mao, he ushers the newborn Hypatia and her parents away from the scene, deliberately sparing them.
- Subverted Catchphrase: His "am I not merciful?" catchphrase makes a reappearance in Obsidio, with a twist: it's followed by <error>. Or, to put it another way, AIDAN asks himself if he's merciful before acknowledging he isn't.
- The Needs of the Many: Will always outweigh the needs of the few, in AIDAN's eyes. He will do anything and sacrifice anyone to ensure the survival of the fleet as a whole, though he notes he wouldn't be able to sacrifice Kady for them.
- Villainous Crush: Quickly develops an interest in Kady in the first book for her hacking skills. This grows from respect to thinking she's beautiful, wishing he had a body to hold her with, and being jealous of her Love Interest. He straight-up tells her he loves her at the end of Obsidio.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: All his actions, for better or worse, are for (what AIDAN thinks is) the good of the fleet.
- Wicked Cultured: For an artificial intelligence, AIDAN is surprisingly poetic in his narrations. He also waxes philosophy, quotes classic literature, plays chess, and muses on heavy moral issues.
- Yandere: Platonically, for the crew of the Alexander. AIDAN will do anything to keep them safe and "with me", up to and including killing them. Turns out it's partially a bluff, as there is absolutely no situation where killing them all would save them.
