Aurora Rising (Aurora Cycle, #1)

by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

[Charli G.]

When Aurora Rising first came out, I wasn’t planning to read it. I’ve had a lot of trouble getting into the Illuminae series and thought this might be the same way, since it is from the same authors. Boy am I glad I decided to give it a try.

The characters in this book are easy to love or hate. Squad 312 are an amazing group of characters. My favorites are Kal and Aurora1), but I really like Cat, Tyler, and Scarlett as well. Finian took some getting used to and I didn’t really like him until the very end of the book, but he finally grew on me. Princeps is an annoying jerk and honestly, I sincerely hope that the rest of the series ends with him getting his butt kicked.

I loved the descriptions of some of the alien species that Terrans2) have come in contact with by the time the story takes place. I love that the alien species here weren’t generic aliens or ones who were taken straight from Star Trek.

The writing style here is perfect. A lot of times I can tell where one author left off and the other picked up, but with Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff, I honestly couldn’t tell when one stopped and the other started. Their writing styles are that seamless. For that I am so thankful because I’ll be honest, being able to tell when one author stopped and the other took over is one of my pet peeves with multiple author books.

The story line was innovative and wasn’t a regurgitation of something I’ve read a thousand times before – nor was it just and expanded version of an old Star Trek TNG book. I can’t wait for the next book in the series to come out and I’m kind of sad because I know it’ll probably be at least a year before it does. But then again, that just means I get to re-read this one!

This book was amazing and kept me so interested that I had to give it 5 stars. I didn’t want to put it down.