AURORA RISING by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Rating: 4 / 5

AURORA RISING by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff is book one in their new Aurora Cycle scifi/fantasy series. I loved The Illuminae Files series, so I knew I would have to pick up this book when it came out! The recent Reading Rush prompt for a purple cover gave me an excuse to dive right in!

AURORA RISING is set in 2380 and man has left earth to explore the universe, meet new alien races (both friend and foe) and found new colonies on other worlds. The book opens with Tyler, a star of the Aurora Academy who is soon to graduate and have his choice of teams to lead. Taking one last flight out before the draft, Tyler finds more than he bargains for when he gets a distress signal and finds Aurora, the only survivor on her ship that has been lost in space for hundreds of years.

When Tyler returns to base, he is left with a ragtag group of people to command who lack the social skills and anger management to quickly form a cohesive unit. On their first mission, things go awry and by the books Tyler must chart a different path. As the only survivor on her ship, Aurora is a wanted woman and the reason why she is wanted is unknown.

I wound up reading a lot of this book through audiobook and it was very well done. Much like the Illuminae Files trilogy, this book used a cast of characters and sound effects to really bring the ensemble cast and the sometimes unique formatting to life. The story itself was a fun adventure tale with unique foes, new alien species to encounter, and fun battle and chase sequences.

While I didn’t find that this book measured up to my love of the Illuminae series, I will be picking up the next in this series to see where the story goes from here!