A review by aishiean
The Brightness Between Us by Eliot Schrefer

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

In The Brightness Between Us, Eliot Schrefer returns to the cosmos he first charted in The Darkness Outside Us—a universe still reeling from the tremors of love, betrayal, and the long aftershock of human ambition.

Seventeen years have passed since Ambrose and Kodiak defied the darkness together. Now their children—Owl and Yarrow—navigate life on Minerva, a fledgling colony both precarious and untamed, where secrets lie buried in the soil and history grows restless. Parallel to this thread is a second: set in Earth’s volatile past, where the original Ambrose and Kodiak confront the unraveling truth behind their mission, and themselves.

Themes of identity, survival, grief, and hope surf across epochs, as the characters’ choices echo in eternity. Romance is present, yes, but no longer foregrounded—it lingers like starlight: distant, persistent, and achingly faint.

However, the novel stumbles in its reach. The dual timelines, though thematically rich, sometimes fracture the flow, and Owl and Yarrow’s arcs risk slipping into archetype rather than individuality. Most of all, I guess the story was just too optimistic, relying at times on a kind of deus ex machina deluxe—solutions arriving so neatly, so improbably, that the rawness of grief and survival feels blunted. Where The Darkness Outside Us thrived on tension, sacrifice, and the uncanny weight of uncertainty, this sequel leans toward reassurance, softening edges that might have cut deeper.