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The Darkness Outside Us by Eliot Schrefer

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The Darkness Outside Us

by Eliot Schrefer

Narrator James Fouhey

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Length 9 hours 49 minutes

Language English

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Bookseller recommendation

“The Darkness Outside Us uses the space setting of a spaceship hurtling through space to explore humanity, love, and humanity's responsibility to a future. Ambrose wakes up in a spaceship on a mission to save his sister on Titan. She was on a mission to create a human settlement, but her settlement went dark too soon after she landed. As he explores the ship, completes maintenance tasks, and generally messes around, he realizes that there is another ship and person tied to his own. Kodiak is from a rival nation and doesn’t seem keen on communication. As they drift through space they begin to drift together and figure out what they are really doing on this mission. Elliot Schrefer creates an entire universe within the confines of a ship and two almost opposite personalities. He uses this scarce setting to explore so much about love and humanity's future. This is a fantastic book for folks getting into science fiction or someone just looking for a story to get lost in.”
— Izzy • Off the Beaten Path

Summary
About the author

They Both Die at the End meets Gravity in this mind-bending sci-fi mystery and tender love story about two boys aboard a spaceship sent on a rescue mission, from two-time National Book Award finalist Eliot Schrefer. Stonewall Honor Award winner!

Two boys, alone in space. Sworn enemies sent on the same rescue mission.

Ambrose wakes up on the Coordinated Endeavor with no memory of a launch. There’s more that doesn’t add up: evidence indicates strangers have been on board, the ship’s operating system is voiced by his mother, and his handsome, brooding shipmate has barricaded himself away. But nothing will stop Ambrose from making his mission succeed—not when he’s rescuing his own sister.

In order to survive the ship’s secrets, Ambrose and Kodiak will need to work together and learn to trust each other . . . especially once they discover what they are truly up against. Love might be the only way to survive.

* Chicago Public Library's Best of the Best Books of the Year * A Booklist Editor's Choice of the Year * A BCCB Blue Ribbon Book of the Year * A YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults & Amazing Audiobooks for Young Adults Book of the Year *

Mystery & Thriller Romance LGBTQIA+ Fiction YA Fiction

Eliot Schrefer is the New York Times bestselling author of many books for kids and teens, including The Darkness Outside Us and its sequel, The Brightness Between Us, as well as Charming Young Man, Endangered, and Queer Ducks (and Other Animals): The Natural World of Animal Sexuality. His books have twice been named finalists for the National Book Award in Young People’s Literature and have garnered a Printz Honor, a Stonewall Honor, and the Green Earth Book Award. He is on the faculty of the creative writing MFA programs at Hamline University and Fairleigh Dickinson University and lives with his husband in New York City. Visit him online at eliotschrefer.com.