Aurora Burning by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff | Review

Synopsis :

First, the bad news: an ancient evil—you know, your standard consume-all-life-in-the-galaxy deal—is about to be unleashed. The good news? Squad 312 is standing by to save the day. They’ve just got to take care of a few small distractions first.

Like the clan of gremps who’d like to rearrange their favorite faces.

And the cadre of illegit GIA agents with creepy flowers where their eyes used to be, who’ll stop at nothing to get their hands on Auri.

Then there’s Kal’s long-lost sister, who’s not exactly happy to see her baby brother, and has a Syldrathi army at her back. With half the known galaxy on their tails, Squad 312 has never felt so wanted.

When they learn the Hadfield has been found, it’s time to come out of hiding. Two centuries ago, the colony ship vanished, leaving Auri as its sole survivor. Now, its black box might be what saves them. But time is short, and if Auri can’t learn to master her powers as a Trigger, the squad and all their admirers are going to be deader than the Great Ultrasaur of Abraaxis IV.

Shocking revelations, bank heists, mysterious gifts, inappropriately tight bodysuits, and an epic firefight will determine the fate of the Aurora Legion’s most unforgettable heroes—and maybe the rest of the galaxy as well.

My Rating:

The rating says it all. I have officially found a new book to obsess about, so brace yourselves for weeks of hearing about this book on my blog!

I have talked about the characters, the uniqueness of the writing style and other stuff I loved in my my review of Aurora Rising, and since that remains almost the same in Burning, I am going to go straight towards the things that I feel were a little different in Aurora Burning than its prequel, Aurora Rising.

It had a faster pace. No doubt Aurora Rising too was fast-paced, but I felt Aurora Burning was even faster, what with our squad having double the enemies than in the previous book. There were more action sequences, more climaxes and more new developments and revelations.

The atmosphere throughout the book was tenser than in Aurora Rising. There was no time for witty banter, sarcasm (or should I say ‘scarcasm’?), and all the light-hearted humour I had gotten used to after reading Aurora Rising. Can’t say I blame the crew though. All in all, some of the cheeriness from Aurora Rising was missing in this book, especially during the last parts of the novel.

Descriptions were more detailed. I don’t know if it is just me, but while reading Aurora Burning, I could literally see the exact scenes in my head, and I don’t remember that happening in Rising. Right from the character descriptions, to the settings, everything arose great imagery in my mind.

The last parts of the novel were mostly…numb. I think this was done in an attempt to make the readers feel how the remaining crew were feeling (namely Scarlett, Finian and Zila), and it worked. The last few chapters basically had no feelings of the our crew at all, even though it was first-person narration. It was almost like Zila was narrating for everyone (no offense there Zila, I know you had started ‘not feeling nothing’). Those few chapters suddenly became completely plot-driven, whereas the entire book was character-driven.

The cliffhanger was even worse😭😭 Atleast after I had finished Aurora Rising, I had the next book with me. And the Rising cliffhanger was like a pebble in comparison to the Burning cliffhanger, which was a huge rock (thrown right at my heart, shattering it). It was the worst cliffhanger in the history of cliffhangers (and I am saying this after reading each and every KOTLC book). In the middle of a firefight….ugh, don’t even get me started about it. Okay, in case it is sounding wrong, this doesn’t mean like the ending wasn’t good (I WANT to learn how to write endings like this!), it just means that the book was so good that I can’t even bear the thought of waiting months for the next one!!