#1 Aurora Rising ★★★★★
#2 Aurora Burning ???
#3 untitled ???

They’re all dead. Hundreds. Thousands. Every single person on this ship is dead, except her.

I want to come up with some sort of witty introduction to this review, something to “hook” you and convince you that whatever I can ramble onto this page will be worthy of this book, but honestly, I’ve just gotta tell you up front. I'm calling it now, in April: Aurora Rising is going down as my favorite book of 2019. I honestly don’t know if anything I read for the rest of this year will come anywhere near the magnificence that is this wonderful, hilarious, heart-wrenching, suspenseful adventure in space.

Thing is, impossible always comes with a price.

I already knew I was going to enjoy this; after all, it’s another gorgeous brain-child from Jay and Amie, the authors of one of my all-time favorite series, The Illuminae Files. What I didn’t know was how well Aurora Rising would hold its own against their first trilogy, how easily it would set itself apart (despite being another banter-filler, emotional roller coaster in the stars), or how singularly consuming it would be. I constantly alternated between reading this slowly to savor it and devouring massive chunks at a time because I just never wanted it to end, but I couldn’t get enough.

Once we walked the dark between the stars, unequaled. What have we become?

While the plot is fantastic, the banter is hilarious, and there are some surefire swoon-worthy moments, what really sells Aurora Rising is the rag-tag bunch of misfits in Squad 312. These characters are easily some of the most lovable, precious beans I’ve ever read in my entire life. I am endlessly amazed by how well these authors can make their characters feel so real that I want to protect and love them at all costs, forever, and become so attached that I literally miss them when the book ends.

I was born with the taste of blood in my mouth. I was born with my hands in fists. I was born for war.

The chapters alternate between their perspectives, and there are quite a few of them, but each of their voices are so particular to that character that I felt like I could’ve easily recognized whose eyes I was looking through, even without the chapter headers informing me. That alone is a nearly impossible feat for writers to manage, but it works so well here. We have: