Aurora Rising

Aurora Rising

by Jay Kristoff & Amie Kaufman

5 out of 5

Synopsis
From the internationally bestselling authors of THE ILLUMINAE FILES comes an epic new science fiction adventure.

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.



Review
When star pilot Tyler Jones lets off a little steam, taking an unregistered flight, he doesn't expect to find a a miracle girl who has been trapped in space for two hundred years. Nor does he expect to end up with the crew nobody wants, taking on a mission nobody would believe.

I received a free copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was a lot of fun.

It starts with Tyler, who is the best of the best, at the Aurora Academy. He follows every rule precisely and is bound for amazing things, just like his famous father. Things are knocked off track when he rescues a strange young women from a ruined spaceship.
His heroism is rewarded with missing the Selection, and instead of getting the pick of the best crew, he gets the rejects nobody else wanted. 

The girl he rescued, Aurora, has an even stranger time of it all. She was supposed to be joining her dad on an early colonisation mission; but instead she is lost in space for 200 years. When she wakes up, there are aliens and strange visions, and the fact that everyone she knows is dead. It's a lot for anyone to deal with, but it gets even more complicated when she realises she might have landed in a massive conspiracy.

Tyler's crew are great. It becomes clear that they all have their own skills, they just don't perform well in tests, or conform to the boring student model.
They each have their turn narrating, as they squabble and clash, and start to turn into a real team.
It's funny and full of banter, and each character has their own view on life.

Their adventure takes them across the known universe, having to deal with violent aliens, space pirates, and zombies!
They face multiple threats, as they try and uncover a conspiracy that has been infecting the human governments. Their only guide are a few mysterious hints, but they know that if they stop, they will be killed for what they know.

I very much enjoyed this, and I am looking forward to the rest of the series!


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