The Aurora Cycle Trilogy: Is it Worth Reading All Three Books?

Have you ever read a book just because the cover looked nice? That’s why I decided to pick up the Aurora Cycle book series. The books have beautiful covers and the border designs of the pages give it a unique feeling. However, you can’t judge a book by its cover. 

The Aurora Cycle series is a trilogy containing Aurora Rising, Aurora Burning, and Aurora’s End. After reading the first book, I really wanted to read the other two. Unfortunately, I found that the second and third books were quite disappointing compared to the first. Before we get into my review, I would like to put out a spoiler warning, as I’ll be discussing a few plot points; however, there won’t be any major spoilers.

The series follows Squad 312 across the galaxy in the year 2380. The Squad must stop an ancient evil from awakening while also dealing with the fact that they are completely unqualified.

The first book, Aurora Rising, is exactly what you want when you get a young adult sci-fi book. It has those space action vibes. There are spaceship flight battles, a chase across the galaxy, funny banter, and a unique cast of different alien species. The first book introduces the setting and, overall, is well written.

Aurora Burning, the second book, was a bit slower paced compared to the first and felt a little too drawn out. Personally, I found the book mediocre compared to the first. There was a lot less action in the second book, and it didn’t have the same feeling as the first. The last book, Aurora’s End, was very focused around time travel, which I find is always a difficult trope to nail perfectly. The time travel aspect felt like a lazy finish. Even though we got a happy ending, I found that it was an unsatisfying end to the series. It left me disappointed as I waited months for the final book and was really excited. Both Aurora Burning and Aurora’s End had too much romance, to the point where I had to put down the book because the romance was taking away from the plot.

Many fantasy and sci-fi books rely on worldbuilding instead of actual plot, and unfortunately, this series seems to have fallen prey to this trend. Overusing tropes or using too many can make reading the genre less interesting. I personally don’t read sci-fi a lot for this reason. Most of the sci-fi books I read usually follow the same pattern. There’s the protagonist with powers the galaxy has never seen before and a moody love interest with a dark secret. It’s very common for fictional books to follow tropes, but they can get very repetitive. 

Each book in the series was written from multiple perspectives, which is fine in the first two books, but got very confusing in the third, especially because of the time traveling.

Well-written fantasy and sci-fi novels have interesting and compelling characters, which can make up for repetitive plotlines. This series didn’t really have any characters that really stood out to me.

Aurora is supposed to be the main character, but if I’m being completely honest, she was a boring character. She’s supposed to be a “chosen one” type character, so she has a grand destiny she has to fulfill. Her character showed promise in the first book, but in the other two, she felt like a cardboard cutout. The problem I have with certain “chosen one” characters is that they don’t have their own wants and personality. Aurora is supposed to save the galaxy, but why does she want to? The book doesn’t delve too deep into Aurora’s character and focuses more on her powers and role as the “chosen one.” She accepted her weird situation quickly and was way too willing to just do whatever her mentors told her to do. 

I really liked Kallis’ character, and I was really disappointed when the author sidelined him in the last two books. One of the problems of writing multiple point of view books is that there are supposed to be multiple main characters. However, some characters may get more content than others, so some of the “main characters” end up being side characters. I enjoyed Kallis’ character arc and his relationship with Aurora is really cute. I just wish we could have seen more of his perspective. 

I didn’t enjoy Scarlet’s character, mostly because her character falls under the “femme fatale” trope, which I’ve never really been a fan of. Basically, “femme fatale” is a female seductress who uses her sexual appeal to charm and ensnare people. Female characters are often portrayed as the peacemakers and talkers in stories, and Scarlet is the team’s diplomat. The book also mentioned that she’s smart, but just “doesn’t apply herself enough,” which I didn’t like.

Scarlet reminds me of those female characters who “aren’t like the other girls.”

Tyler was supposed to be one of the “more important” main characters, but I honestly forgot his name while writing this review, which says a lot about what I think of his character. There was also Zila and Finan, but we didn’t get to see a lot of their character development as they were sidelined, which is disappointing because they both had a lot of potential. 

The main issue I had with this series was that there were too many romantic subplots. This may just be because I don’t like romance, but focusing too much on romance can ruin a good plot. The romance in this series was fast-paced and seemed to come out of nowhere. 

Overall, I would rate this series 7/10. I would recommend reading the first book, but not the other two books as they were a little boring. The second and third books aren’t badly written, but they just are not my taste. This is just my opinion, so maybe you’ll enjoy this whole series more than I did.