sci fi – Down the Rabbit Hole

Series: The Aurora Cycle #3

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.

Is this the end?
What happens when you ask a bunch of losers, discipline cases, and misfits to save the galaxy from an ancient evil? The ancient evil wins, of course.
Wait. . . . Not. So. Fast.
When we last saw Squad 312, they were working together seamlessly (aka, freaking out) as an intergalactic battle raged and an ancient superweapon threatened to obliterate Earth. Everything went horribly wrong, naturally.
But as it turns out, not all endings are endings, and the team has one last chance to rewrite theirs. Maybe two. It’s complicated.
Cue Zila, Fin, and Scarlett (and MAGELLAN!): making friends, making enemies, and making history? Sure, no problem.
Cue Tyler, Kal, and Auri: uniting with two of the galaxy’s most hated villains? Um, okay. That, too.
Actually saving the galaxy, though?
Now that will take a miracle.

Endings are meant to go out with a boom and I do believe Aurora’s End did that, albeit a quieter one than I expected.

I’m not usually much of a sci-fi reader but I’ve come to realize any sci-fi with Amie Kaufman’s name tagged to it works well for my tastes. The world she and Jay Kristoff created here was expansive with the different sentient species coming together, and the whole legacy of the Aurora Legion. I loved that there was still room for world building growth even here in book 3, which is the kind of great storytelling that exists in expansive worlds such as Star Wars. It’s like the world doesn’t revolve around the characters, but the characters revolve around this world that still holds mysteries that we are only getting a taste of.

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4 star, YA

Review: The Towering Sky by Katharine McGee

October 20, 2021October 26, 2021 Fives @ Down The Rabbit Hole

The Thousandth Floor #3

Welcome back to New York, 2119. A skyscraper city, fueled by impossible dreams, where the lives of five teenagers have become intertwined in ways that no one could have imagined.

Leda just wants to move on from what happened in Dubai. Until a new investigation forces her to seek help—from the person she’s spent all year trying to forget.

Rylin is back in her old life, reunited with an old flame. But when she starts seeing Cord again, she finds herself torn: between two worlds, and two very different boys.

Calliope feels trapped, playing a long con that costs more than she bargained for. What happens when all her lies catch up with her?

Watt is still desperately in love with Leda. He’ll do anything to win her back—even dig up secrets that are better left buried.

And now that Avery is home from England—with a new boyfriend, Max—her life seems more picture-perfect than ever. So why does she feel like she would rather be anything but perfect?

In this breathtaking finale to The Thousandth Floor trilogy, Katharine McGee returns to her vision of 22nd-century New York: a world of startling glamour, dazzling technology, and unthinkable secrets. After all, when you have everything… you have everything to lose.

Welcome back indeed to Manhattan 2119. The final book in The Thousandth Floor trilogy coming to a spectacular finish. Once again we are thrown into the world of The Tower, a 1000 floor monstrosity taking up most of Manhattan. We have the Fullers up alone on the thousandth floor, and everyone else beneath them. After everything that has transpired in the first and second books, the third book comes presenting one last set of problems for our protagonists to face together.

The Towering Sky takes place a short time skip after the final events of the second book. The same protagonists from the second book living with the aftermath of what happens in book 2. Once again we are taken through multiple POVs of these teenagers, whose lives have become inexplicably complex and intertwined through a series of unlikely circumstances.

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4 star, YA

Review: The Thousandth Floor by Katharine McGee

October 6, 2021 Fives @ Down The Rabbit Hole

NEW YORK CITY AS YOU’VE NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE.

A thousand-story tower stretching into the sky. A glittering vision of the future where anything is possible—if you want it enough.

WELCOME TO MANHATTAN, 2118.

A hundred years in the future, New York is a city of innovation and dreams. Everyone there wants something…and everyone has something to lose.

LEDA COLE’s flawless exterior belies a secret addiction—to a drug she never should have tried and a boy she never should have touched.

ERIS DODD-RADSON’s beautiful, carefree life falls to pieces when a heartbreaking betrayal tears her family apart.

RYLIN MYERS’s job on one of the highest floors sweeps her into a world—and a romance—she never imagined…but will this new life cost Rylin her old one?

WATT BAKRADI is a tech genius with a secret: he knows everything about everyone. But when he’s hired to spy for an upper-floor girl, he finds himself caught up in a complicated web of lies.

And living above everyone else on the thousandth floor is AVERY FULLER, the girl genetically designed to be perfect. The girl who seems to have it all—yet is tormented by the one thing she can never have.

Amid breathtaking advancement and high-tech luxury, five teenagers struggle to find their place at the top of the world. But when you’re this high up, there’s nowhere to go but down….

I was recommended this futuristic sci-fi by one of my new friends, and I was fairly impressed! I don’t often read sci-fi’s, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect. However, if I ever were to read sci-fi’s, this one was definitely my kind of book. Realistic enough to just be beyond the realm of our current technology, with a great setting (NYC!) – I thought it was the perfect place for all the drama to take place.

The Thousandth Floor is a science fiction novel based in Manhattan, 2118. The people in this story mostly live in a gigantic tower, with as you guessed it, a thousand floors. The base of the tower is extremely large, while the top of the tower only contains one unit. The main characters include Avery Fuller, a perfectly perfect girl who lives on the thousandth floor, and her friends that go to school with her, as well as some extras they meet along the way. Taking place over ever-shifting POVs, this is a story of how all of these characters paths somehow cross, ending with a girl falling off the top of the tower. What happened to lead to all this?

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