Aaru: The Aaru Cycle Book 1

Title: Aaru

Author: David Meredith

Published: July 9, 2017 by David Meredith

Purchased: I voluntarily read and reviewed a complimentary copy of this book, $5.99 on Kindle.

☆☆☆☆/5

Blurb: Rose is dying. Her body is wasted and skeletal. She is too sick and weak to move. Every day is an agony and her only hope is that death will find her swiftly before the pain grows too great to bear.

She is sixteen years old.

Rose has made peace with her fate, but her younger sister, Koren, certainly has not. Though all hope appears lost Koren convinces Rose to make one final attempt at saving her life after a mysterious man in a white lab coat approaches their family about an unorthodox and experimental procedure. A copy of Rose’s radiant mind is uploaded to a massive super computer called Aaru – a virtual paradise where the great and the righteous might live forever in an arcadian world free from pain, illness, and death. Elysian Industries is set to begin offering the service to those who can afford it and hires Koren to be their spokes-model.

Within a matter of weeks, the sisters’ faces are nationally ubiquitous, but they soon discover that neither celebrity nor immortality is as utopian as they think. Not everyone is pleased with the idea of life everlasting for sale.
What unfolds is a whirlwind of controversy, sabotage, obsession, and danger. Rose and Koren must struggle to find meaning in their chaotic new lives and at the same time hold true to each other as Aaru challenges all they ever knew about life, love, and death and everything they thought they really believed.

Review: This was really interesting, a balance between being a little religious, modern, political and creepy.

I was running a little on empty on my energy so I would really only read this during my work breaks but I still couldn’t stop thinking about it. I will admit that it’s not as compelling as The Reflections of Queen Snow White, it’s still a good read.

I believe there were some typos, a few, but not enough to really throw me off. The pace was very steady and flowed, never staying in one place long. The detail was great, allowing for the readers to see what was going on.

I did think the climax was a little rushed, it just slowly built up and then BAM! there it is. I guess I understand it, the book was coming to an end but I also think that the climax itself could have been a great cliff-hanger for the next book of the series.

I’m rather excited to see where this goes.

Thank you for reading my review,