Fantastic story, a real page-turner. Impossible to put down." — Stephen King
“Forget a good night’s sleep. Aurora is epic, but personal and poignant, horrifying and darkly funny, and flat-out suspenseful.” — Linwood Barclay, New York Times bestselling author of Find You First
"With Aurora, David Koepp has firmly staked his ground as one of the best thriller writers working today. Come for the mind-blowing concept of a massive geomagnetic storm that wipes out nearly every power grid on Earth, stay for why this book truly soars—characters you’ll love, breakneck-pacing, and the question we’re all wrestling with in these wild, modern times: what happens when life slips out of our control?” — Blake Crouch, New York Times bestselling author of Dark Matter and Recursion
“David Koepp’s Aurora contains two great narratives on a collision course. When, where and how they collide will you keep you turning pages right up to The End.” — Brian De Palma
“There’s a reason David Koepp is the most successful screenwriter of all time. It’s because he’s one of the greatest storytellers of all time. Aurora is up there with his best: scary, funny, and thought provoking. Buy it immediately.” — Scott Frank, writer and director of The Queen’s Gambit
“Aurora is everything a great novel, and great thriller, should be. David Koepp’s story is frightening, surprising, wildly entertaining, but also full of heart. I don’t know of many writers who could keep that many plates spinning as deftly, or as successfully. Somehow Koepp does. Aurora is the work of one of our best storytellers, at the top of his game.” — Mike Lupica, co-author of The Horsewoman with James Patterson, and Robert B. Parker’s Revenge Tour
“David Koepp does it again! Mixing humor, terror, and an all-too-believable doomsday scenario, Aurora is at the top of my list this year.” — Christina Dalcher, author of Vox
"Engaging characters deal with disaster in this swiftly paced, well-written thriller… Koepp, a successful screenwriter (Jurassic Park, Spider-Man), brings those skills to this novel, crafting carefully placed revelations about the characters’ relationships and the bursts of violence in their increasingly chaotic world into an exciting and satisfying tale." — Kirkus Reviews, starred review
01/01/2022
Sure, Aubrey Wheeler has split from her bad-news husband and is trying desperately to corral a rebellious teenage son, but now she's got a bigger problem. A solar storm has knocked out power worldwide, and she's hustling to protect her neighborhood even as her estranged brother, a wealth-ridden Silicon Valley CEO, hunkers down in his fancy desert bunker. With a 200,000-copy first printing; from prolific screenwriter Koepp, also author of Cold Storage.
★ 2022-04-12
A billionaire and a suburban family struggle to survive when power goes out around the globe.
This brisk thriller is set a few years in the future, after the world has been through the coronavirus pandemic and thinks it’s learned how to handle disaster. It hasn’t. A coronal mass ejection on the sun isn’t an unusual event, but this time one sends out a massive cloud of solar plasma aimed straight at Earth. Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration see it coming and know it will fry electrical grids around the globe. Their attempts to shut down systems to protect them are shrugged off by anti-science politicians, and the world goes dark. No electricity means no internet, no phones, no TV or radio, no supply chain—“Everything from a nuclear power plant to your coffeepot,” one expert says. “If it’s connected to the grid and turned on, it will blow.” Thom Banning is prepared for the catastrophe. A tech billionaire, he’s purchased a disused missile silo and spent $30 million to convert it to a secure underground bunker big enough to house a village—of Thom’s choosing. He and his family, plus selected employees, evacuate to the bunker and settle in, but things will not go exactly as Thom planned. Meanwhile, Aubrey Wheeler is not prepared at all. She’s been busy trying to steer her conference business through the pandemic, avoid her creepy ex-husband, Rusty, and cope with Rusty’s son, Scott. The boy is a typically surly teenager but wisely chose to stay with his stepmother when she and his father, who’s addicted to just about everything you can be addicted to, divorced. When the power goes out in their Illinois suburb, all Aubrey has on her emergency shelf is 11 cans of black beans. Koepp, a successful screenwriter (Jurassic Park, Spider-Man), brings those skills to this novel, crafting carefully placed revelations about the characters’ relationships and the bursts of violence in their increasingly chaotic world into an exciting and satisfying tale.
Engaging characters deal with disaster in this swiftly paced, well-written thriller.
09/01/2022
Koepp (Cold Storage) slows down the pace of his thrillers in his latest novel. This time, the monsters are purely human when the country doesn't learn from one global disaster (the COVID pandemic) before it heads into the next—a blackout that covers most of the world. Unlike his prior novel, this scientific thriller has a mostly character-driven plot that follows estranged siblings, Thom Banning and Aubrey Wheeler, and their respective communities as they struggle to survive without modern conveniences. Enjoyment of the novel depends solely on how much leeway listeners are willing to give these flawed characters. This task is made more difficult by the voices Rupert Friend chooses for his narration. Many of the most annoying characters are given equally irritating voices, which can make it even harder to spend time with them. These unfortunate choices detract from Friend's otherwise competent and pleasant narration, particularly in the welcome expositions that separate the characters' stories. VERDICT Although the audio production is uneven, fans of speculative science in the vein of Michael Crichton, James Rollins, or Andy Weir will be delighted.—Matthew Galloway
