Ellie's Reviews > Aurora Rising

"As I wait her out, I realise I’m sitting on a space station tens of thousands of light-years away from Earth. Totally alone. How did this become my life?”

C H A R A C T E R S

> Tyler Jones. Squad leader, golden boy, alpha, moniker of “captain hotness”.

> Aurora Lie-Jin O’Malley. Cryogenically frozen for 200+ years before being rescued from a space ship crash. Trying to adapt to an unfamiliar world. Half Chinese. Unfortunately seems to be unrelated to O’Malley the Alley Cat (brownie points for whoever catches my joke).

> Scarlett Jones. Tyler’s older sister. Rule breaker, does not adhere to dress codes. A strong woman! She’s hot af and she knows it.

> Kaliis “Kal” Idraban Gilwraeth. This is the rumoured hot space elf everyone is talking about who probably got lost on the way to Middle-Earth (or the Jedi training school, considering his species seem to use lightsabers.) Also I just want to say that I was reading Kristoff's summary of this book on Goodreads and he used a GIF of Thranduil for Kal and I choked. on. my. freaking. tea. All, Thranduil is the love of my life.

> Zila Madran. Low-key crazy scientist. A fan of earrings and always has a unique pair.

> Finian. Another alien. Has an exoskeleton to support his movements. Flirtatious bisexual?

> Cat. Breaks chairs over people’s heads. Has a Phoenix tattoo over her throat (hardcore) and a few others elsewhere. Will not take crap from anyone. Is a little bit like tough meat; my feelings on her were varied across the book.

This book is essentially Six of Crows x Star Trek with a tiny side of Indiana Jones and Annihilation. Interstellar training schools, misfit underdog groups, ancient artefact heists, and fucking creepy dangerous plants. The very early parts reminded me a bit of Light Years by Kass Morgan.

At the current moment, I'm the only person in my mutuals who's given this book 4 stars instead of 5 *shifty look*. Don't get me wrong, it isn't bad, but I also ... didn't think it was a 5 star read for me. In my opinion, Illuminae was better. I was more emotionally invested in Illuminae.

One thing I struggled with in Aurora Rising was all the POVs. There were seven, one for each character. I enjoyed Aurora's, Tyler's, and Kal's the most, but at some points it just felt like everyone was overlapping. And honestly, sometimes I would be reading and I would have no idea whose narrative I was reading through (they're all in first person) so I'd have to skip back to the beginning of the chapter to check. Kal was the only one I could mark as really individual, as he has a more archaic narrative voice.

I also felt like some of the characters lacked a certain depth. Kaufman & Kristoff have given each character a story, some sadder than others, but I just . . . didn't feel for some of them? Aurora is my fave bean though. She captured my heart the moment she unashamedly started oogling Tyler.

In terms of plots too, it was good and interesting and some parts were very fresh/concepts I haven't seen in YA sci-fi for a while, but I also wasn't blown out of my mind. (I know I sound derogatory and so I do want to highlight that this was quite an enjoyable read lmao.) The whole novel was well-plotted and set at a good pace.

Also, I never thought I'd say this, but there was a steady load of innuendo in this book and like . . . I don't normally care much but it just made the book push more into NA territory and I didn't always care for it. Maybe I'm getting old and grouchy, but I was just over some of the jokes.

Now, onto something I really liked! The freaking Middle-Earth jokes. Kal gets so confused about Aurora calling him Elrond/Legolas and he's just like "... that's not my name why are you calling me that". This character reminded me quite a bit of Rowan Whitethorn (Kal is tall, broad, broody and silver-blonde wowowow perfect love interest material), and his race of Slydrathi is heavily based on elvish/fae appearance and lore. Including the idea of a mating bond that is oh-so prominent within a certain set of YA/NA fantasy novels. I swear, there are points where I felt like Kaufman & Kristoff were using his character as one big joke/being cleverly subversive, and I won't lie, I really enjoyed that.

Aurora Rising was a steady novel. Good cast diversity (including aliens), though I won't lie, I was expecting an LGBTQ+ relationship somewhere (especially since I know Kristoff is so good at them), but that might be something for later books. I'm interested to see how others find this, and whether I've just missed some vital 5-star aspect about this novel really. I'll definitely be continuing with the series though!

Let's be honest, though: if this book had had a prominent quirky AI in it (not you, Magellan, I'm sorry but you're no AIDAN/X-Bot) I probably would've bumped it up a little.

Also, I still don't think this cover really gets the actual aspect of the story across. Aurora is a big part and so it’s fitting she should be the cover model - but as much as I love Bowater's art, I'm not so sure about this and it ignores the group dynamic of the book and the tone of this novel. But I can also acknowledge that this cover will sell copies and help it do well in the market.

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Buddy read with the lovely Seline <3

Thank you to Rock the Boat publishing for an arc in exchange for an honest review!