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A review by streetwrites
The Brightness Between Us by Eliot Schrefer
5.0
Character (5/5)
Plot & Pacing (5/5)
Setting & Surroundings (5/5)
Dialogue & Diction (5/5)
Craft & Voice (5/5)
Reading Experience (5/5)
Final Rating:
5/5
Comments:
I find myself occasionally writing in reviews that an author just didn’t know what kind of book they wanted to write, that they just threw a bunch of genres against the wall and left them all in the same book. This story, to an even greater degree than its predecessor, is a real genre-hopping odyssey, but the difference here, compared to those other books I mentioned, is that Eliot Schrefer knew exactly what he was doing. There’s no random experimentation to see what works. It ALL works. This almost felt like multiple books, an anthology of sorts, organized in a way that tells an irresistibly compelling narrative and, inexplicably, gets its readers all in their feels over a damn sheep at the end of the world. Schrefer packs action, urgency, political intrigue, emotional vulnerability, tenderness, family drama, the cosmic unknown, and sci-fi awesomeness into just a few hundred pages. I savored this story in a way I don’t usually get to experience sci-fi. These two books together are a collective masterpiece of emotional, smart, nuanced, and brilliant prose. I don’t like to use the word “transcendent” often, for fear of wading into trite cliches. But, truly, this was a transcendent reading experience. This is the kind of book that makes me less afraid of things like death and the unknown. Bravo!
Plot & Pacing (5/5)
Setting & Surroundings (5/5)
Dialogue & Diction (5/5)
Craft & Voice (5/5)
Reading Experience (5/5)
Final Rating:
5/5
Comments:
I find myself occasionally writing in reviews that an author just didn’t know what kind of book they wanted to write, that they just threw a bunch of genres against the wall and left them all in the same book. This story, to an even greater degree than its predecessor, is a real genre-hopping odyssey, but the difference here, compared to those other books I mentioned, is that Eliot Schrefer knew exactly what he was doing. There’s no random experimentation to see what works. It ALL works. This almost felt like multiple books, an anthology of sorts, organized in a way that tells an irresistibly compelling narrative and, inexplicably, gets its readers all in their feels over a damn sheep at the end of the world. Schrefer packs action, urgency, political intrigue, emotional vulnerability, tenderness, family drama, the cosmic unknown, and sci-fi awesomeness into just a few hundred pages. I savored this story in a way I don’t usually get to experience sci-fi. These two books together are a collective masterpiece of emotional, smart, nuanced, and brilliant prose. I don’t like to use the word “transcendent” often, for fear of wading into trite cliches. But, truly, this was a transcendent reading experience. This is the kind of book that makes me less afraid of things like death and the unknown. Bravo!