Review - The Brightness Between Us by Eliot Shrefer

It’s been 17 years since Kodiak and Ambrose landed on the planet they were sent to colonize. The planet was not the earthly paradise they were expecting. Few of the plants and animals they bought with them can grow well, and only two of the children whose embryos they grew have survived. There were so many deaths they stopping trying. Back on earth, 30,000 years earlier, the original Ambrose and Kodiak are dealing with the truth: There never was a rescue mission to Titan. The actual mission was to colonize another planet, and it won’t be them going, but 20 cloned copies who will be revived periodically to perform maintenance on the ship, then discarded like a used paper towel. Unfortunately, even more betrayal awaits the pair.

This unexpected sequel/prequel to The Darkness Outside Us picks up, in part, where the first book left off, so you need to have read that story first to know what’s happening in this tale. By combining stories about what is happening on the nascent colony with the events surrounding the launch of the Coordinated Endeavor, this book is both prequel and sequel to the original story.

The book is divided into episodic parts alternating between the exoplanet and the earth. The first part takes place on the planet christened Minerva by the two men, and it is narrated by Owl, one of the two surviving children born on Minerva. She is supposedly a clone of Ambrose’s sister, Minerva, and she is a headstrong young woman. Other parts on Minerva are told from the point of view of Owl’s brother, Yarrow. He seems like a sweet but troubled young man. The root cause of Yarrow’s problems turns out to be the major driver of the plot, as the Ambrose and Kodiak left on earth race to ensure the survival of their future selves.

The Ambrose and Kodiak we meet in this book are the same young men that the first book focused on, and yet they aren’t. These two have already had their illusions broken. We get Ambrose’s side of the story first, as the golden boy has his world crushed by no less than his mother. We know from his clones that Ambrose is clever and resourceful. In this book, we get to see him in his element as the eldest son of the world’s most powerful family. He may go off the rails for a little while, but then he quickly recovers.

The “real” Kodiak is more like the copies we met in the previous story. He’s a loner and not very trusting of other people. Yet, like his clones, he discovers an unexpected affinity with his complete opposite: Ambrose.

Like its predecessor, this is a complex story that will keep you guessing about where it’s heading until almost the very end. Overall, I found this book a bit depressing, but I think that has a lot to do with the state of things in late January 2025. If I had read it a few months earlier, I might have taken more solace from the ending.

“The Brightness Between Us” is available from Amazon (commissionable link).