Review of Aurora Rising (Aurora Cycle, book 1)

Aurora Rising (Aurora Cycle, book 1)

Author: Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf

Publication date: May 2019

Date of review: August 2019

    Alpha Tyler Jones - the top-ranked graduating cadet at the Aurora Academy, trained to do whatever missions the people (human or otherwise) of the Milky Way need.

    Legionnaire Scarlett Jones - a saucy diplomat who happens to be Tyler’s twin sister.

    Legionnaire Cat Brannock - the best pilot in the academy who’s only scared of her own emotions.

    Legionnaires Zila Madran, Kal Gilwraeth, and Finian de Karran de Seel - the misfits of Aurora Academy who somehow landed in Tyler’s squad.

    Aurora Jie-Lin O’Malley - the rescued mystery girl who has been asleep for 200 years. 

    Meet squad 312. After Tyler rescues Aurora, the girl who was thought to be dead two centuries ago, what begins as an ordinary supply mission turns dark. The squad discovers that Aurora has escaped quarantine and snuck aboard their ship. She has powers that she is unable to control and soon she has the squad fleeing from aliens and stealing relics of a species said to have gone extinct long before the oldest known species still around began recording history. The squad begins to discover what and who they can trust as a galactic war that began a million years ago rekindles.

    Fans of Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner’s Unearthed will enjoy the bold, sassy heroines of Aurora Rising. The story itself has some mature elements more suitable for young adult than middle grade readers. The characters are diverse (in both personality and species), and so relatable to a wide audience. Adults might also enjoy Aurora Rising. Each chapter is told from the perspective of a different member of squad 312, helping you get to know each one a little better. I highly recommend this story to YA readers who enjoy science fiction set in a future where humanity is not alone in the galaxy and must adjust to fundamentally different cultures, customs, and concerns. 

- D. K. Nuray

Review of Wilder Girls

Wilder Girls

Author: Rory Power

Publisher: Delacorte Press

Publication date: July 2019

    The girls on Raxter Island are no longer students, but survivors. Sent to a boarding school for girls ages 11-18, their bodies have become infected with a mysterious plague that they call the Tox. It has not only poisoned them, but every living thing on the island. Each flare up is worse. The number of girls left alive is dwindling, and the Navy won’t lift the quarantine order they set on the island when the Tox began. Hetty, Byatt, and Reese are a part of the handful of girls who are left. All they know is their rotations on Gun Shift atop the roof, the meager supplies the Boat Shift girls bring back, and that unless they are those Boat Shift girls, they must never venture outside the school’s gates. That is, if they want to stay alive. Then Byatt, Hetty’s best friend, goes missing. Hetty and Reese will do anything to find her - sneak past the gates, defy Headmistress, and face the woods that the Tox has poisoned almost beyond recognition. But braving the woods brings even more hardship than the ever worsening challenge of surviving. Hetty and Reese begin to uncover the island’s darkest secrets, and begin to discover the pain that each of them has been hiding from the other.

    Wilder Girls is a chilling read, but it is also a heartwarming story of friendship persevering against all odds. The author’s use of sentence fragments sharpens the anxiety and eeriness saturating this story. More than just suspense, there is often a feeling of dark emotional vertigo. This is a great book for any middle grade or young adult reader who savors transfixing horror with strong female characters set in a recognizably modern world.

- D. K. Nuray

Review of The Book Thief

The Book Thief

Author: Marcus Zusak

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf

Publication date: March 2006 (USA)

    Unlike Liesel Meminger, I may not have enough words for the brilliance and agony of this story. Thankfully, Marcus Zusak did. Death is the narrator. It is 1939 in Nazi Germany. Liesel’s little brother is dead and her shattered world will begin to tentatively rebuild when she picks up one book beside his grave. Left with foster parents and terrorized by her dreams, Liesel finds comfort in words and books. Her own story is one of halting wonder as she begins learning to read, fear and danger when her new family hides a Jew in their basement, and indescribable pain when she loses both her words and her world once more. 

    In The Book Thief, passionate emotions, colors, and language strangely blend in an aching harmony. The conflations of sight and smell and touch and taste become an oddly sane view of the world from Death’s perspective. This story is certainly not one for audiences below sixth or seventh grade because of the depth of feeling and brutalities integral to the story. The Book Thief is well-written, as rich and bitter as dark chocolate, depressing, and extremely thoughtful and thought-provoking. I highly recommend it to any reader who is willing to have their senses and sensibilities wrenched at the same time.

    With Death narrating, our first assumption would be that The Book Thief is bound to be dark and gory. And it is dark - it is about a girl who is abandoned by her mother in the midst of war. However, Death both accentuates and lightens the darkness of the story. He speaks of carrying souls from children who have died from bombs and cold, but he also speaks of noticing colors to keep himself sane (at least as sane as Death can be). There are also moments of witty relief, such as when Death says “It kills me sometimes, how people die.”

    Learning about Nazi Germany in history class conveys the scope and scale of the horror, but the magnitude of it all can overwhelm a personal perspective.  Numbers and facts and even pictures don’t necessarily let us really see the people themselves. Oddly, words do. Marcus Zusak’s words almost luxuriate in the potent, stabbing, inevitable grief of terrible loss.  There are times when Marcus Zusak’s metaphors and sensory combinations overwhelm or confuse, but that’s not often. His characters are beautifully drawn and realistically flawed. And we lose them. They are taken not by cancer or old age or even by Death, but by their fellow humans. By bombs and fear and hunger and hate. Especially towards the end of the story, I had to set the book down because I could only take the constantly impending horror in small doses. But I came back.  And I was as sorry as I was relieved when it was done. Just as we learn to regard Death as part of a story rather than merely its end, we learn to appreciate loss as something that colors and accentuates everything beautiful.

    To the kids reading this review - please read this book. It will make you think, it will make you cry, and it will open your eyes to just how much beautiful language can affect a reader. To the adults reading this - you will be better able to engage with this story in terms of its historical context than kids will. Lastly, to parents - please read this with your children if you can, but consider their emotional maturity first. The combination of perspective, language, and history in The Book Thief makes a wonderful story to both read and discuss.

- D. K. Nuray