Aurora: CV-01

Frontiers Saga, Book 1

By: Ryk Brown

Narrated by: Jeffrey Kafer

Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins

Publisher's summary

A world recovering from a devastating plague. A brutal enemy threatening invasion. A young man seeking to escape the shadow of his father. A ship manned by a crew of fresh academy graduates. A top-secret experimental propulsion system. A questionable alliance with a mysterious green-eyed woman.

What destiny has in store for the crew of the UES Aurora is far greater than any of them could ever imagine. And this is only the beginning....

©2012 Ryk Brown (P)2013 Tantor

Decent Modern Military Sci Fi

Aurora CV-01 is a decent modern sci fi with enough characterization and action to keep one eagerly listening. Although the main character might be a bit much of a cliché (the unique snowflake, glib male version), I still enjoyed the story.

Ethan is the son of a senator and wants as far away from his famous father as possible. He enlists in the fleet - yet despite lackluster scores, manages to be assigned to the fleet's flagship. But he must compete with a very by the book colleague who wants the top position. And a side cast of characters will also have to deal with their own challenges being raw recruits suddenly thrust into an unforgiving situation with an alien threat.

This felt very captain Kirk and the Kobayashi Maru - the man whose instincts and daring are far more important than by-the-book learning and so can compensate for any situation. Of course, this is a very male-driven book - all the women are 'hotties' and antagonize or sleep with the male characters providing titlation. It was very nun or whore - and as a female myself, it would have been nice to see the women as people and not objects to bag or be annoyed by.

In the end, I did enjoy this first book in the series and felt the Audible narrator did a decent job.

Nasal

I haven’t figured out If the narrator is holding his nose or reading through Stephen Hawking’s voice synthesizer. This may be a great book, but I’ll never know. 15 minutes in and I gave up because of the robotic rambling of Jeffrey Kafer. Absolutely terrible.

Military sci-fi light

The story is good! it's heavy on the interpersonal relationships and interactions but not that hard into the technology or military aspect. The ranks are essentially meaningless and much of the science is chalked up as unkown quantities. Jeffery Keefer did an excellent job as always

Better Military Sci-Fi out there.

When you get past the slightly confusing timeline established in the beginning chapters, Aurora: CV-01 operates on a fairly basic premise. Earth's first exploratory spaceship/testing vehicle for interstellar travel. There are hints of compelling characters dropped lightly throughout but nothing really develops into something that makes you care about the characters. They felt mostly like caricatures and props for the science and overall story. However, most books or series in this narrow genre get by just fine on the strength of the plot and science. For me though the story got a little carried away too fast without giving anything away, I felt things just advanced too quickly on a shaky foundation.

One is better served checking out the Lost Fleet by Jack Campbell, which has many of the same elements yet presented far better.

The narration was fine barring the atrocious Russian accent of one character. I always cringe when narrators are forced to attempt accents due to the characters they've been given. Nine times out of 10 those accents are terrible and detract from the story and listening experience. On the rare occasion when the narrator has the ability to pull off an accent well, it exponentially enhances the experience, this sadly is not one of those instances.

great story and narration

loved it, the narrator does pretty entertaining accents as well and adds just enough color to enhance but not distract

Reading was OK, store is excellent!

What did you love best about Aurora: CV-01?

Book held my attention from the start.

What did you like best about this story?

Story never seems to lag. Plots don't take long to develop, and then you're on the the next plot change.

Did the narration match the pace of the story?

Narration was OK.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

I had trouble putting it down, but the number of characters was small enough that if you put it down for a few days, you'd not be confused on who's who when you start back up again.

Any additional comments?

I had heard the story was great from Steve Gibson (Security Now & grc.com), but when I listened to the sample of the audiobook, I thought the narration sounded flat, and was afraid I would be annoyed by the reader. As it turned out, in my opinion, narration by Jeffrey Kafer is not the greatest, but it is better than I originally thought, and the story is EXCELLENT.

A great start to an ongoing space saga

The plot line was good and narrated well. It should be a good series to follow with multiple books.

Such a great series!

I have listened to the series a few times now and really enjoy it. A new book was recently released, so I figured I'd start from the beginning again. I recommend this series to anyone who loves science fiction and space.

Nice Surprise

Sounded like it could be a fun story and I was pleasantly surprised it was. Nice action and good story. Characters are fun it will be interesting to see who they can trust or who they shouldnt trust.

Great story, awesome Narrator

I have read all of Mr Brown’s books to date and have enjoyed every part of the journey. He includes a lot of details about space travel, the mechanics, and physics that add to mentally experiencing the action and drama. I have truly enjoyed hearing Jeffrey Kafer narrate the actions, the scenes, and characters with true inflections to capture your attention at key moments. He does this well in these books and other works I’ve heard by him.