Aurora Rising

In 2380, the graduating cadets of Aurora Academy are handed their first assignments. Tyler Jones, the top student in his class, has spent years picturing the squad he would choose. Then a heroic but reckless decision costs him his pick, and he ends up leading the cadets no one else wanted.

His team is a mismatched crew: a diplomat who is quick with a cutting remark, a scientist with worrying instincts and a habit of firing at her bunkmates, a technician with a huge chip on his shoulder, an alien fighter who struggles to control his temper, and a pilot who insists she has no interest in Ty at all. Getting them to work together would be challenge enough for any squad leader.

But Ty's real trouble is someone else. During a rescue, he pulls Aurora Jie-Lin O'Malley out of interdimensional space, where she has been held in cryo-sleep for two hundred years. Auri wakes in a future she does not know, with little to hold on to. She may also be the spark that sets off a conflict that has been building for millions of years.

With the galaxy at stake, the fate of everything may rest on a squad of misfits and discipline cases. Aurora Rising is a fast, funny space adventure that is the first book in the Aurora Cycle, written by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff.