The first installment of the popular space opera series for young people «Aurora Rising», was published by «RM». Its authors, the Australian duo Amy Kaufman and Jay Kristoff, have previously become famous in the West for their other series, The Illuminae Files. It’s not clear why they didn’t start translating it here, but it’s probably due to the expensive acquisition of rights, so they took on the relatively new «The Aurora Cycle». In any case, the first book is worth reading if you like dizzying adventures in space and ancient civilizations. And the publication itself deserves special attention because the quality of its execution and design are simply incredible.
Authors Amy Kaufman, Jay Kristoff
Translator Borys Previr
Publisher «RM»
Language Ukrainian
Number of pages 464
Cover Solid
Year of publication 2024
Size 150×225 mm
Website ridna-mova.com
The year 2380. The best graduate of the military academy «Aurora» Tyler Jones is preparing for his first missions and selecting candidates for his team. The main thing here is to have time to sort out the best ones because there will be only sociophobes, losers and other graduates with whom no one wants to work. But it so happens that on his last patrol, Tyler receives an SOS signal from a colonial ship that disappeared several hundred years ago. On it, he finds the only living girl named Aurora and rescues her.
However, the hero doesn’t have time for the selection process, so he gets all those who were not chosen by the others. The only consolation is that Tyler’s sister Scarlett and his best friend Kat joined the «dream team» called Squad 312. The new team is assigned a humanitarian mission to an old space station. However, it turns out that this first assignment for the graduates is much more important than they thought, and their cargo is the only weapon against an imminent threat to all races, planets, and systems in the Milky Way.
I hope you’re familiar with the term Young Adult Sci-Fi. That’s what it is. And if not, I’ll explain — it’s a space opera for young people with some love storylines, action, and stunning adventures. The authors added science fiction to the mix and spiced it all up with sarcastic characters and humor. This is the general and relatively short definition of the book «The Rise of Aurora» and, probably, the series as a whole.
Amy Kaufman and Jay Kristoff definitely know how to write bestsellers, so their language is simple and colorful, modern and sharp, with lots of dialog, short sentences, and not too many chapters. And the story is told through seven characters, so each chapter focuses on one of the members of Unit 312, as well as the same girl, Aurora, who was rescued at the beginning.
On the one hand, it definitely adds vigor to the novel, and the same story is constantly told from different angles, characters’ perspectives, their peculiarities, etc. On the other hand, the plot lacks depth because as soon as we get used to one narrator and learn something interesting about him, the chapter ends, and we are thrown to another. And so on in a circle. I think the authors sacrificed the latter for the former because they have a trilogy here, so there will be plenty of time to reveal each of the existing characters even with this alternation.
The characters themselves are three-dimensional, lively, interesting, and somewhat naive. All of them are beautifully and vividly written. The characters are different, they often infuriate with their actions, others surprise, and still others inspire. All of this creates an overall realistic picture, as if you were watching a real team of strangers who gradually become close and are ready to go to the ends of the universe for each other.
But the plot, though epic and full of dynamics, does not impress because it has already happened more than once. This is not the first story about saving the universe, about the Ancient Races that once lived, about the Ancient Evil that wants to destroy and conquer all systems, about the chosen ones and the superweapon that can stop it.
It seems that the authors also understand this, so they focus on the characters, their relationships, action and fight scenes. There’s also a lot of sarcasm and witty humor, and, of course, a bit of romance and love.
The universe «Rise of the Aurora» is relatively banal, but there is enough science, other races, inventions, etc. But the basis of interstellar flights of terrans (as humans are called here) — a variation on the theme of space folds «used in science fiction more than once», which significantly reduces the time of space travel.
If I compare the book to other famous works, it reminds me of a mixture of the novels «Skyfall» and «Interstellar» by Brandon Sanderson and To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini. And if this is a comparison with movies and TV series, then «Aurora Rising» combines elements of «Star Trek», «Firefly», «Star Wars» and «Guardians of the Galaxy». In fact, it’s an explosive mixture that is difficult to tear yourself away from despite the aforementioned hackneyed plot and fast space travel.
The publication itself deserves special attention. «Aurora Rising» has an incredibly detailed super-cover and a wonderful original design of the regular cover with retro and embossed artwork. There are also painted sections, color drawings of some characters on the flyleaves, high-quality paper, and an easy-to-read font. But for some reason, we didn’t get the lace.
It’s good that «RM» simply based the Ukrainian edition on the original design of the book. I think they were also impressed with this book and its look, so they just decided to release it as it is because it’s really hard to make something better for this genre and segment.
