Review: The Darkness Outside Us

Hi Everyone, I hope you are doing well! I’m drinking my Snickerdoodle tea, with a splash of honey to sweeten it. I read The Darkness Outside Us by Eliot Schrefer on the recommendation Christine and Brianna. And it was 100% worth it.

This follows two 17 year boys who are on a mission to rescue one of their sisters’ (Ambrose). However, everything is not as it seems, you get a salty AI, a Cranky Co-Spacefarer, and a tiny robot that basically wants to kill them when they stop listening to the AI.

If you haven’t read the book and still plan to, click off now. Because the rest of the post gets spoilery.

So now to get on to the spoilery part of the review. Kodaik and Ambrose are going on a mission to find Ambrose’s sister, who is the first settle on Titan (one of Saturn’s moons). Ambrose and Kodaik didn’t know at launch that it would be a joint mission. And neither one of them remember the launch.

The AI, keeps requesting they fix the ship, incessantly, even when you’d think non-life threatening repairs could wait a little while they form a bond, since they are stuck in space together. This is an LGBTQIA+ romance, and neither of the boys’ sexual orientation is specifically said they do end up together, repeatedly.

Now, the AI doesn’t want them to enter one specific room in the ship, why? that’s what Kodaik and Ambrose want to know! Come to find out, it’s clones! There was really no distress signal form Ambrose’s sister on Titan, and the boys are actually on a mission to save humans by populating a planet that scientists have identified as safe for human life. However, it is to far for humans to travel in 1 lifetime thus the clones.

I loved the writing and story in this book, it was an interesting twist on save the humans. While most Sci-Fi books with that storyline go with freezing the humans until they arrive on the planet they are traveling to, Schrefer identifies why that is scientifically not possible. This is also a story of two competing nations coming together in the form of Ambrose and Kodiak for the good of humanity. Plus you get the grumpy sunshine relationship that I love so much and violin music in space!

Till we meet again,
Kaitlyn