Aurora Rising by Amie KaufmanMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I’d probably give this book 4.5 ⭐ if I could.
I listened to this book in an audio format, which affects my experience of this book, so please take this into account when reading this review.
This book is set centuries into the future when humanity has discovered a way to transition the galaxy using ‘folds’ in space. However, if you travel through the fold, once you reach 25 years old the forces that the fold inflicts on the human body start to affect the mind meaning everyone over that age must travel through the fold in stasis. Captains, pilots, diplomats and engineers and others, who need to be awake to do the work of piloting the fold, all must be people under the age of 25. As humans have explored they have met other races of sentient beings and have finally learnt how to live with them after a few centuries of warring. To help police the galaxy The Legion is formed from several races who train their youngsters to become the force that keeps everyone safe. Training ends at age 18 and they are sent out into the galaxy to fulfil the orders they receive from Aurora Academy.
On the day that the graduating class will receive notification of their squads, Tyler Jones can’t sleep and heads out into the fold to rest his brain. Instead of rest, he finds a ship that went missing 200 years ago and the single survivor inside a sleep pod is Aurora O’Malley. Rescuing her sets a sequence of events in motion that he could never have imagined, his life has changed forever with that one decision to go flying.
This story evolves into a fascinating adventure where a team of young people find themselves alone in the galaxy trying to find a way to save life as they know it. Alone and unguided, except by their own instincts they must face dangers they don’t understand until it’s too late. Aurora has been changed by 2 centuries in the fold, everyone she knew is dead and the galaxy is a very different place from the one she knew when she went to sleep.
The world-building in this book is excellent. There are different races and worlds that are articulately and imaginatively described helping bring the story to life.
The characters are all interesting and though they are all young, they are mature by today’s standards having trained hard since they were 11 or 12 years old to take on massive responsibilities at age 18. The interactions between the characters are fun with some of the characters knowing each other exceptionally well and others are strangers who have to find their way into being fully integrated members of a squad. There is the banter of the familiar interwoven with the prickliness of strangers being forced into close contact. It’s well done and interesting to read.
The story is fascinating with the roots of it being set millennia in the past. The current characters are blips on the timeline, but they are the most vital to its conclusion. This story starts simply and grows more complex with each chapter as the plot is revealed layer by layer right up until the end.
This book had several narrators which I quite enjoyed though as one of the characters had either an Australian or New Zealand accent that the other narrators were forced to duplicate when speaking with her voice there were some quite shaky parts. As they had multiple narrators I think it might have been better to have those narrators speak with their own voices throughout each chapter rather than have one narrator speak the section told from their point of view and leave them struggling with conveying the different character’s voices. Some narrators were better than others at doing this and when there was a poorly done section it detracted from my enjoyment and broke my concentration. I understand that it's a lot more complicated from a production point of view, but I felt they should have made the harder choice if they were going to have multiple narrators anyway.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book and will definitely listen to the next book in the series, because I want to know what happens next.
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases, made after using the above links.
No comments:
Post a Comment