Sunborn Rising: Beneath the Fall

On a distant world of forests floating on an ocean around a star, a blight threatens to plunge all life into darkness.
But three friends seek the light.
Together, they will Fall and be lost.
And at the very Root of darkness, they will find themselves.
But will it be enough to help them find their way home?

The World of Cerulean
Light and water flow from the ocean into the roots of the Great Trees, up through the boughs, and out over the lush canopies. But the once vibrant treescape has grown dim over generations of arboreal life, and the creatures of the forest have forgotten the light.
Barra, a young, willful Listlespur, finds her late father’s hidden journal, and reads about the old world and the mysterious plague her father believed destroyed it. He wrote that he warned the Elders. He urged them to take action. Those were his last words.
Together with her two best friends, Barra will explore every bark, wood, and leaf of the Great Forest to relight her world and complete her father’s story, even if she has to travel beneath the Fall.


Aaron Safronoff was born and raised in Michigan where he wrote his first novella, Evening Breezes. In his early twenties, he moved to California to attend culinary school. He fell in love with the Bay Area and has never considered leaving, although he did eventually leave the school.

During his ten years in the games industry, he worked at various levels and for several disciplines including quality assurance, production, and design. All the while he was writing a novel, short stories, plays, and poetry. His career in design introduced him to amazingly intelligent, fun, and creative people, many of whom he considers family today. 

Safronoff self-published, Spire, in 2011, and won the Science Fiction Discovery Award for the same in the summer of 2012. By the end of that year he decided to drop everything and free fall into fiction. In the following three months he completed work on the sequel to Spire, Fallen Spire, edited Evening Breezes, and published both.

Today, Safronoff is co-founder and Chief Storyteller of Neoglyphic Entertainment and working on his fifth novel, the second book of the Sunborn Rising series. In his spare time, Safronoff enjoys reading a variety of authors, Philip K. Dick, Cormac McCarthy, and Joe Abercrombie among them. He enjoys living near the ocean, playing and watching hockey, and video games. He has a deep love of music and comedy.

My Review

First off I really liked the illustrations, I felt they were what really raised the book above others in its genre.  Sunborn Rising: Beneath the Fall takes place on the planet Cerulean which is a star at the middle of a ocean covered by a forest where many creatures live. The main characters are three young Arboreals who journey to find out why the Great Trees are dying. Their journey eventually leads them on a quest to save their world. My favorite character in this book was Barra Swiftspur; her journey begins when she finds her ,believed dead, father's notes on Creepervine. Creepervine is a fungus that her father thought could endanger everyone. I really liked how Barra Swiftspur proved herself to be an independent female character with how she defied her own mother in order to follow in her father's steps to try and save her planet. I found it admirable how she rose to the challenges that she faced. I feel like each challenge she overcame helped her to become the Listlespur that she was meant to be. I was sent a copy of this book for free for only my honest and unbiased review.