In Illuminae, the main character Kady flees her planet after it is invaded in the year 2575 with her ex-boyfriend Ezra and boards a refugee ship, where she encounters many obstacles. These include a war between two rival megacorporations, a conscious and sometimes deceitful AI, and biological warfare in the form of a plague manufactured by BeiTech Industries, the enemy megacorporation. The authors, Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff, use Kady’s Hero’s Journey to develop the plot and show Kady’s growth. In particular, they use Crossing the Threshold when Kady and Ezra escape their planet and Tests, Allies, and Enemies when they meet and overcome the challenges mentioned above.
Kady helps Ezra get on a refugee ship, the Hypatia, after BeiTech
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She is going from her Ordinary World, a colony on a small planet named Kerenza towards the edge of the universe, to the spacecraft where she will be spending the entire rest of the war against BeiTech. In a debriefing interview, she later tells a member of the Ministry of the Interior United Terran Navy, “I was in class when it started. This is going to sound stupid, but I broke up with my boyfriend that morning, and he was right there on the other side of the room. I’m staring out the window and coming up with all the things I should say to the jerk, when these ships fly right overhead and all the windows start shaking” (2). Before her Hero’s Journey changes her, she is a typical teenage girl with a talent for hacking, worrying about school and the ex-boyfriend she just broke up with. That window-shaking event is the catalyst for her entire Hero’s Journey. It is her Call to Adventure, forcing her to take action and do what is necessary to protect those she loves and to do what she believes is right. Crossing the Threshold comes directly afterwards when she takes Ezra onto a refugee ship. In that same interview, she informs her interviewer, “We were driving a BeiTech truck now, so I had to