Aurora: CV-01

The Frontiers Saga starts off as a fascinating book with a strong opener dealing with United States and then galactic politics. Unfortunately the first chapter is where the good stuff stops.

In Aurora: CV-01, Ryk Brown makes wild attempts to borrow pieces from all the space science fiction out there. Unfortunately the blend of Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Star Wars, and countless others fails hard. Paper-thin characters offer nothing for us to feel invested and I couldn't care less if someone's life was on the line. Shallow dialogue and lack of any plot development further derail Aurora. It is only because of the central plot that I kept trudging through this book, but it's at nowhere near a level to entice me to read the rest of this series.

I would have given this book three stars but the nail in the coffin is the lack of editing and gratuitous amount of stylistic errors littering this book. I must ding Aurora: CV-01 a whole star because of this. Sentences repeat themselves as if banging readers on top of the head to get a point across. Ryk Brown also breaks a cardinal rule over and over with multiple point-of-view changes mid-scene. One moment you're in the mind of Captain Nathan, the next it's the thoughts of some random person you don't care about. Whole paragraphs make no sense and others drag on. I was relieved to know at least Ryk Brown ran a spell check on this book before self-publishing it.

Aurora: CV-01 is a textbook example of what is wrong with the self-publishing world today. It is glaringly obvious that Ryk Brown did not have an editor or anyone with writing / critiquing experience edit the book. I would bet good money that he typed ‘The End' and then ‘Publish' on Amazon five-minutes later. No editor would allow a book with this many stylistic errors be published, even as a self-published title.

Ryk Brown does himself a great disservice by not having this book edited because the main concept was interesting enough to keep me reading. Unfortunately a lack of editing, borrowing too much from Star Trek (I could envision the entire story taking place on the Enterprise), and offering a story with no depth is what ultimately sank this book. While I won't read them, I can only hope these issues were resolved in the other installments of the Frontiers Saga.