Aurora Rising

April 15, 2019
In 2380, Aurora Academy’s Tyler Jones has it all. He’s the most decorated cadet in his year, in line for the best missions with peacekeeping group Aurora Legion, and ready to recruit his dream squad—he just has to get through the Draft. But when a late-night flight reveals a ship that disappeared more than 200 years ago, he follows protocol and rescues a cryogenically frozen human girl, missing the Draft entirely. Stuck with his twin sister and a squad of misfits no one else wants, Tyler resigns himself to making supply runs for the foreseeable future. Then Auri, the girl he rescued, turns up as a stowaway. Now on the run from the Global Intelligence Agency, which will stop at nothing to capture Auri, Tyler and his squad must bring her to safety and probe deeper into her visions of Octavia, a lost human colony in a different solar system. The story is told from seven perspectives, which can make for uneven character development, but coauthors Kaufman and Kristoff (the Illuminae Files series) maintain an exciting, fast pace; a steadily coalescing band of crewmates; and plentiful romantic tension in this entertaining space opera. Ages 12–up.