Aurora Rising by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Title: Aurora Rising

Author Name: Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Age Rating: Older Teen (14+)

Star Rating: ✦✦✦✧✧

Genre: Sci-fi, Drama, Suspense

Summary:

Aurora Jie-lin O’Malley (long name, I know) has come a long way from the teenage girl who was more worried about her parents breaking up than the warrior she is now.

Having witnessed death, destruction, and fear at her own hands, Auri is ready for the next book to happen already so that I don’t have to write about all the anguish she faces throughout the first one. Sadly I only finished reading the first volume, so here’s the summary:

Aurora is a girl out of time, and one who’s out of shits to give.  After awakening 200 years in the future, Aurora becomes distinctly aware that her ship’s destination for the colony Octavia III was never met. Being in the future means experiencing a lot of feelings, meaning O’Malley isn’t really enjoying her trip to the future. Regret, sadness, and righteous anger are only some of the emotions she feels. Additionally, she seems to have telekinetic powers, ones that drain her immensely and cause red blood to gush out of her nose.

Favorite Character:

Zila is one of those emotionless types of people with no knowledge of how human interaction works. Surely she’s a genius, but nobody said she had to be a master of social interaction (or any type of interaction really).

Cruising through the book with a point of view chapters that usually lasted one or two sentences, I was surprised by the character development she received near the end, especially since it didn’t feel too rushed or sloppy. When Zila realizes that she needs to work on her emotional understanding of others (aka empathy), a whole new door opens for her.

I hope in the next book we see our apathetic homegirl turned into someone with more regard for those around her. (Only a little bit, I’m not asking too much!) Honestly, though, the different POV changes were a little disconcerting. I’d be fine not seeing any pages with Zila’s point of view and still loving her spontaneous decisions. 

Storyline Development:

This is a unique series about aliens, government conspiracies, and the milky way galaxy. The main point of the story is the characters themselves. Yes, there is a plotline, and yes it is surprising and fun to read, but I slowly became invested in the characters, shipping them together (Auri and Kal are so cute together! But they’re together b/c of a weird bond which threw me off) and overall seeing how they reacted in each situation.

I felt endlessly bad for Finian, whose exo-suit deters him whilst letting him move somewhat normally at the same time. It’s a good thing he’s the Gearhead (whatever that means), and I spent time wondering the logistics of the whole exosuit he wore. For example: what disability does Finian have exactly? But anyway, I’m glad we had Finian to lighten the mood, the other characters were glad about it too!

Worldbuilding:

We’re in the Milky Way Galaxy. Yeah, humanity doesn’t really have time to be venturing to one of the many other galaxies out there when they’re too busy enforcing the rules in their dominions. I think one of the most interesting elements of the story was the alien species.

I think the only thing that needs to be known about the aliens is two of the species. The Syldrathi are tall, hulking, and dangerous. This race of aliens is known for their insanely good fighting skills, aversion to touch, and their silver hair paired with purple eyes.

Meanwhile, we have the Betraskans with skin as white as snow, lips as pale as printer paper, and eyes as dark as ebony, every single one of them is the embodiment of snow-white (sort of). Betraskans are known for having very large families and therefore being very social creatures who cannot tolerate being alone.

My Thoughts:

This book would’ve been a five-star book if it didn’t take me three weeks to get through the first half of the book. The second half of this story is intriguing, action-packed, and un-put-downable. Clearly, I’m the world’s greatest completionist for slaving through the beginning.

While the book is masterfully written, its nicely-established world is introduced by way of the clueless female lead, which is sort of a cliche fanfic trope if you ask me. It’s like when the Mary Sue MCS of self-insert trash novels ask the dumbest or most sussy questions or make friends with talking textbooks in hopes of gleaning more info about their surroundings.

Instead, we get a Siri type of AI named Magellan (is that the name?) that randomly squawks out the answers to questions.