AURORA RISING

There is no love in violence.
Amie Kaufman

SYNOPSIS:

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.

WHAT I LIKED:

– The multiple points of views keep the audience engaged and prevent the boredom of constantly reading only one character’s thoughts and POV.

– The characters:

Tyler Jones is the Squad 312 leader. He was top of his class so he had the chance to pick his ace team had he not decided to take a quick trip into the Fold and discover a distress signal from a pod that was missing for two hundred years. He decides to help and that is when he discovers Aurora O’Malley, the only survivor, frozen in her cryopod. Because of the time he spent rescuing her, he missed the Draft and with it his chance to pick his Ace Team giving him no choice but to end up with the ones nobody else picked for themselves.

Scarlett Jones is the Squad 312 negotiator and also Tyler’s twin sister. She’s beautiful and charismatic and often uses her charm in order to persuade and win negotiations and she’s also great at reading people which clearly gives her an advantage. She could have chosen to stay in a better quality team but she refused to leave her brother behind.

Cat is the Squad’s pilot and a very good one. She’s Tyler’s best friend since childhood but she’s also in love with him. She’s fierce and has a hell of a temper. She’s also the only one in the Squad that doesn’t like Aurora because of all the problems she’s causing her squad and considers giving her up to the ones who are pursuing her.

Finian de Seel is a Betrasken and Squad 312’s gearhead. He’s a tech genius that would be a great asset to any team. The problem is Fin caught the Lysergia plague which caused nerve damage, muscle weakness, and impaired mobility so he has to wear an exosuit at all times and sees himself put to the side too many times because of that. In order to keep his emotions at bay, he developed his sarcastic and arrogant personality showing that nothing affects him at all.

Zila Madran is the Squad’s scientist genius. She’s very clever and the most intelligent member of the squad. Zila is also very reserved and quiet. People often find her odd and with lack of emotions and that is why she’s put to the side by others. Despite what people think, Zila is very sensitive and quietly suffers with what people say to her.

Kaliis Gilwraeth is Squad 312’s Tank, in other words, he’s the fighter and the person you don’t want to mess with. He’s a Syldrathis and a former member of the Warbreed cabal. The three crossed blades on his forehead identifies him as a warrior and a guardian. He’s seen as a traitor for belonging to the Warbreed because most Syldrathi from that cabal separated from their people and joined the Starslayer that ended up destroying Evaa, the star the homeworld of the Syldrathi orbited. The star collapsed upon itself and turned into a black hole that destroyed everything in the system and with it 10 billion Syldrathi. He’s brooding and violent but he can also be very protective of the ones he likes.

Aurora O’Malley is a girl out of her time. On her way to the colony Octavia III, her ship lost its way in the Fold and Aurora remained frozen in her cryopod for two hundred years. She finds herself in a place and at a time foreign to her and doesn’t know who to trust although she immediately finds herself safe and comfortable near Tyler, the one who saved her.

– The companionship is lovely. When we get the most different and problematic characters and they have to form a team and work together somehow.

– The banter between the squad is very amusing and lifelike. The authors often chose dangerous situations for the characters banter between each other. Fin is the king of banter and the stressful scenes usually have his sarcastic punchline and I enjoyed every single one of them.

– The space adventures are amazing. It’s my first time reading about this. I love movies with space adventures and wars but I’ve never tried in books before but I’m glad I did.

– The artwork on the cover is amazing. Congratulations on the designer!

WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE:

– The mate thing annoyed me. Don’t get me wrong, I love the ‘mate thing’ and I loved to have it at SJM’s books for example but I wasn’t expecting to find it here also. Now I feel it’s stalking me. I think this mate thing is on it’s pick and the authors tried to capture that here in order to please the readers but they didn’t have to. This story would still be amazing without it. It was completely unnecessary.

– The girls fantasizing about their ex’s had me screaming at the book. So here we have this squad and the most amazing girls there are thinking about boys. Scarlett passes her time thinking about her dozen ex’s and Cat, well Cat is brooding over her love for best friend and how he doesn’t love her back. Don’t get me wrong they’re still badasses but couldn’t we have a story without the ‘girl hormones’ mixed in the middle?

CONCLUSION:

Totally worth the buy!

Bookstagram made me buy these series. I bought them blindly but I’m so glad I did. The end of this book makes you want to go straight to the next. I can’t wait to see what happens to the Squad in Aurora Burning.

Also, who’s excited for the third one?!

Me! Me! And I haven’t even read the second!

THIS BOOK STALKER CONFESSES:

PLOT: ★★★★

CHARACTERS: ★★★★

WRITING: ★★★★★

COVER: ★★★★★

OVERALL: ★★★★