Welcome to my weekly segment, Waiting on Wednesday, where I look at upcoming books that I am planning to order and review in the next few months and which I think I will really enjoy.  I run this segment in conjunction with the Can’t-Wait Wednesday meme that is currently running at Wishful Endings.  Stay tuned to see reviews of these books when I get a copy of them.  For this latest Waiting on Wednesday, I check out the upcoming third and final book in a particularly fun young adult series with Aurora’s End by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff.

Over the last few years, one of the most entertaining and exciting young adult series out there has been the cool and impressive Aurora Cycle books by bestselling Australian authors Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff.  Kaufman and Kristoff, who both have some great individual series under their belts, have formed an excellent and outstanding team to create The Aurora Cycle novels.

Starting in 2019 with Aurora Rising, this fantastic series follows a mismatched team of teenaged space cadets who act as galactic peacekeepers.  However, on their first mission they encounter Aurora, a girl out of time whose extended cryogenic sleep has somehow given her physic powers.  Thrust into the midst of a galaxy spanning conspiracy, the team were declared renegades and are forced to go on the run.  Their epic story continued in Aurora Burning, another excellent novel which expanded many of the plot points from the first book, while also introducing some great new characters and plot lines.  Aurora Burning ended on a massive cliff-hanger, with the lives of all the protagonists hanging in the balance, and the end of the world seconds away.

That leads to the focus on this article, Aurora’s End.  Aurora’s End is the upcoming third and final entry in The Aurora Cycle which will provide readers with the big conclusion to entire overarching plot.  Currently due to be released on 9 November 2021, Aurora’s End has a awesome sounding plot synopsis already available, as well as the beautifully haunting cover above.

Synopsis:

The squad you love is out of time. Prepare for the thrilling finale in the epic, best-selling Aurora Cycle series about a band of unlikely heroes who just might be the galaxy’s last hope for survival.

Now that will take a miracle.

It looks like Kaufman and Kristoff have some fun plans in place for this final book, and I for one am very excited for it.  I have a lot of love for this series, due to the eclectic mixture of protagonists, the amazing humour and the vast and impressive narrative.  As a result, I am quite eager to see how the entire series ends, especially after that great cliff-hanger.

Based on the synopsis above, it looks like all the main protagonists will be coming back for this book in one way or another, and I am really keen to see how their story arcs end up.  It also looks like we are going to get some time-travel shenanigans, as some of the team are trapped in the time-stream, attempting to change their future.  This was hinted a bit in the previous novels, especially Aurora Burning, and it will be cool to see how the time travel elements ties everything together.  It will be rather fun to see these over-the-top characters attempt to deal with all the consequences of time travel, and you can imagine they are going to get a lot of stuff wrong.  Readers should also be prepared for a lot of drama and heartbreak, as the authors left several emotional storylines open at the end of the second novel which are going to be very hard to resolve.

This final book in the Aurora Cycle has a lot going for it, and I think that we are going to be in for an exceptional time with Aurora’s End.  Kaufman and Kristoff have done an incredible job with the first two books and the series, and there is some great setup going into Aurora’s End.  I already know that this final novel is going to feature a lot of outstanding humour, great character work and some clever storylines, and I am extremely confident that these two talented authors will be able to tie everything together perfectly.  This will probably be one of the best young adult novels of 2021, and I am very much looking forward to it.  I can only hope that I will not get too emotional if one of the amazing characters gets hurt or killed (you never know with final books).