Aurora Rising Book Review

Aurora Rising by Jay Kristoff and Amie Kaufman

From Goodreads: The year is 2380, and the graduating cadets of Aurora Academy are being assigned their first missions. Star pupil Tyler Jones is ready to recruit the squad of his dreams, but his own boneheaded heroism sees him stuck with the dregs nobody else in the Academy would touch…

A cocky diplomat with a black belt in sarcasm
A sociopath scientist with a fondness for shooting her bunkmates
A smart-ass techwiz with the galaxy’s biggest chip on his shoulder
An alien warrior with anger management issues
A tomboy pilot who’s totally not into him, in case you were wondering

And Ty’s squad isn’t even his biggest problem—that’d be Aurora Jie-Lin O’Malley, the girl he’s just rescued from interdimensional space. Trapped in cryo-sleep for two centuries, Auri is a girl out of time and out of her depth. But she could be the catalyst that starts a war millions of years in the making, and Tyler’s squad of losers, discipline-cases and misfits might just be the last hope for the entire galaxy.

They’re not the heroes we deserve. They’re just the ones we could find. Nobody panic.

Hey everyone,

First up, you might have noticed that I haven’t included the usual marble blog post header I always use. That’s because silly me went and left my laptop at my parents’ house the other day, and since it’s about a three hour drive, I’ve been forced to borrow a replacement laptop from my university instead. Once I get it back, the headers can resume.

In the meantime though, I wanted to post a review of Aurora Rising. I’ll be honest and say, initially I wasn’t sold on this book. As much as I love Jay Kristoff’s writing style, I wasn’t sure I’d love the sci-fi futuristic genre of the book. So, I told myself that I could maybe pick up a copy in a local store, rather than risking trying to get the Illumicrate special edition book. Which, in hindsight, was probably a mistake. Because this book was brilliant.

I admit, during the first few chapters, I still wasn’t convinced. I liked Aurora pretty much straight away, and I thought her voice was strong in the writing style, but I just wasn’t gelling with her plot. I didn’t know how it fit with the overall story, and that frustrated me a bit. But then we move on quite quickly and it got going. In some ways, it’s a little reminiscent of Nevernight. Even with Kaufman as co-writer. There’s a kind of mirroring in the first few chapters which, although it is very clever, with last lines of past scenes leading into similar lines of present scenes (oh god, I’m not making any sense here, am I?) the past and the present are a bit mashed together here, and it took me a moment to wrap my head around it. Thankfully there are no footnotes to digest this time (I loved them eventually, but it was touch and go for a while) so I offer kudos for that.

Once it gets going, the rest of the plot is simply stunning. Both authors have such a way with words, and it was honestly hilarious, laugh out loud funny, even during the tensest of moments. Some of that is definitely character development (which I’ll come to in a moment) but most of it is just that Amie and Jay are so goddamn funny. The humour neatly folds into the world-building too, and you can find strands of it in the wonderful descriptions of each of the races that are interspersed throughout the book, as well as the opinionated and often unhelpful Magellan. The Ultrasaur is one of the best things I’ve read about in a while, and I think I actually howled with laughter reading that description, even as I quaked in my boots at the thought of it. Weird, I know.

There are also some great twists and turns in this book to keep you guessing. I figured out one or two things (and potentially more, but we have to wait til book two to see if I’m right about that) but I also didn’t always know what was going to happen next. Possibly because the characters were also very confused throughout. I liked that there were so many moments where I couldn’t guess the outcome. Aurora Rising just feels so fresh and awesome. And I’m genuinely thrilled at the thought of another book in the series coming out so I continue my new love affair with the series.

As for the characters, I just fell in love. Aurora is cool and quirky and frankly, adorable. Ty is intelligent and moral and charismatic. Cat is terrifying and rebellious. Scarlett is brilliant and alluring. Fin is a genuine asshole with a secret heart, Kal is severe and emotional and fierce, and Zila is both amazingly smart and absolutely terrifying. They’re a great bunch of misfits and they gel together brilliantly. It reminds me a little of the Dregs in Six of Crows, they just work together so well, and the chemistry is brilliant. There was also some diversity which the authors attempted to explore. Zila, while not clearly stated, seems to have Autism, and Fin is in an exosuit as he needs it to walk and move about. I can probably count the number of YA books on one hand that I’ve read that include main characters with disabilities, so this was really cool for me. Plus, although the authors don’t shy away from mentioning these disabilities, they also show the characters as people, people whose whole identity doesn’t revolve around their disabilities. Which was awesome. We could do with a few more of these, please.

I could have done without some of the romance, as it felt a bit stilted and unnecessary, but I did love the fact that each of these characters had a really distinct voice, and there was nobody that I didn’t instantly love. I wish we got a little bit more of Zila’s perspective on things, but I did appreciate that we’ll probably get to that at a later date. For now, I think the book has done enough to make me want to sign up to the Aurora Legion myself.

Overall, I’m giving Aurora Rising a 10/10 stars. Although it was a little confusing to start with, once it got going, I really enjoyed it and the characters and humour totally made it a thrilling read. Sci-fi isn’t my favourite genre, but this book was a pleasant surprise and I’m very keen to discover what happens in the next book.

Has anyone else read this book already or plans to? What do you all think of it? Let me know in the comment section down below ❤