Aurora Rising by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Summary from Goodreads:

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.

Review:

So, I usually don’t write bad reviews. Basically, if I’m really not feeling a book, I’ll stop reading it and then I feel like I can’t honestly review it, without having read the whole thing. Unfortunately, I finished this book. I kept telling myself it would get better. I love these authors. I loved Illuminae, and this just sounded so good.

Unfortunately, this fell flat. What worked for me in Illuminae with all the characters and differeing points of view, just did not work here. Too many of the characters sounded the same. I had the problem of forgetting whose point of view I was in and needing to go back to the beginning of the chapter to remind myself. Too many of them had the same voice! They all had the same weird reactions to bad situations and to being attracted to people. Like Aurora (who’s been frozen and asleep for 200 years) should not speak and react the same way to everyone else…including alien species. She should sound like me.

I also kept comparing this to Twilight and to Throne of Glass, and not in a good way. There was an equivalent here to Maas’s “mating” and Meyer’s “imprinting.” And, well, gag me. That basically destroyed my love of Throne of Glass. Why is it here? Why? And why is each character perfectly paired up too (in a very straight/heterosexual manner, I must add). So much of this book was about crushes and romance, and normally I’m all for that. But, here, it just felt like over-the-top mush.

I liked the overall idea for the story. I like the running from what they know element. I liked that the characters happened upon this crazy knowledge that they can’t un-know. And I liked the action/suspense of it all. I guess that’s what prevented me from putting this book down for good. That and wanting to know what on earth was happening. It took me 3 weeks to read though…

All in all, the action was good. The characters were terrible. They all sounded the same. The romance was borderline terrible. And the points of view switches were confusing at best. I give this a very disappointed 4/10.