Reviews

Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson

christopher_e_a_barker's review against another edition

adventurous emotional reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

algorithminflux's review against another edition

4.0

I loved how the characters ended up on Earth in the end. That was really a glorious silver lining, my favourite kind. Fantastic story!

milzer's review against another edition

Just boring. I can't imagine anything interesting happening in the rest of the book.

tregina's review against another edition

4.0

While I didn't love this like I loved the Mars trilogy, or even like I loved 2312, it was still incredible and fascinating. There was a sparseness and a distance to the narrative when the POV was that of the ship's AI that I didn't connect with, but the story itself kept me going all the way through. Robinson has a way of seeing the universe and a way of examining all the sciences—including social—involved and all the angles that really works for me.

thedadsie's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional inspiring sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

eliaa's review against another edition

slow-paced

3.25

grahamclements's review against another edition

4.0

The plot somewhat reminded me a lot of Stephen Baxter's the Ark, a book I didn't like much. But Aurora makes up for that with the science and its message. In reality I would give it 3 stars for the plot and 4 stars for the science, so maybe 3.5 stars.

its_zach's review against another edition

adventurous informative sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

jennkei's review against another edition

2.0

Super long. Really rambly.

mjohn058's review against another edition

adventurous hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I thoroughly enjoyed this (audio) book. It was read exceptionally well by Ali Ahn, to the extent that I think book readers might be missing out on a superior telling. In any case…

I enjoyed the subjects, the construction, and the devices used. Well written. 

I particularly enjoyed the subtle evolution of

ship

as the story progressed. So much jargon, but since we were learning alongside them, it made perfect sense story-wise. Delightful.

I was disappointed that

the plot shifted back to Freya’s perspective for the balance of the book. I was very invested in the ship-as-narrator construction, and it felt unnatural to pivot back to focusing the plot on an individual  after spending an ever-increasing amount of pages devoted to the humans in aggregate.

. To that end, I think the book should have more-or-less ended with

ship’s destruction. The author had done such a good job pivoting my focus to the ship and the humans in an abstract way, I frankly didn’t care about Freya’s journey

.

Regardless, I thoroughly enjoyed this, and can’t wait to try out some more of the authors works!

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Xenophobia and Suicide