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The sequel to The Darkness Outside of Us. I enjoyed it! It's both interestingly different from the first book and is satisfying on the level of "I want more of this," which is exactly what one wants from a sequel.
Literally everything about this book is massively spoilery for the first one, including its premise. I'll do two sets of spoiler cuts, one for the premise and one for the whole book.
The novel intercuts two storylines. One follows the original Ambrose and Kodiak, the ones who never went on the mission. The other follows the clone Ambrose and Kodiak, on the planet they named Minerva, eighteen years after the end of the first book.
On Minerva, Ambrose and Kodiak have two kids: Yarrow, a 16-year-old boy, and Owl, a 15-year-old girl. They are the only survivors of the seven zygotes they defrosted, the others having died in infancy or very early childhood, mostly from being unable to adapt to the slightly different atmosphere on Minerva. (Though one "fell into a pit," which I have to say sounds like carelessness.) There is apparently no native life on Minerva except for some very mean ungulates, but it's hard to say because they have never gone very far from the landing site.
Owl, restless, curious, and unhappy at her permanent lack of romantic prospects as the only other humans are her fathers and brother, wants to explore, which her fathers have banned as it's dangerous. Yarrow wants to know more about... everything, really... since, in a classic "repeating what was done to you" move, their fathers have refused to let them learn much about Earth and its history.
Back on Earth 30,000 years ago, Ambrose is a spoiled rich kid who is horrified to learn that his bazillionaire mother has engineered the fake mission 1) as a distraction to prevent a world war, 2) a narcissistic desire to have her genetic son be the first to colonize another planet. Basically the entire mission was a narcissistic billionaire's bright idea, which explains a lot about why it's so nuts. Angry and appalled but unable to do anything about it, he has an encounter with the pop star clone Ambrose had a crush on in the first book, which leads original Ambrose to seek out original Kodiak.
Stop reading here if you don't want to be spoiled for the entire book.
Back on Minerva, Yarrow and Owl are perplexed and angry to learn that Minerva has no native life (as far as anyone knows) - the angry ungulates are yaks that got mean because, Ambrose and Kodiak suppose, they were raised without older yaks to guide them. Basically Ambrose and Kodiak had massive trauma over their entire lives plus five children dying plus most of the Earth animals they defrosted dying, and responded by frantically trying to shield their surviving children from anything that could possibly harm them, all the way down to "We have lots of Earth animals that we could try defrosting but have been too upset by previous failures to give it a shot."
Meanwhile, Yarrow is having weird blackouts and inexplicable violent impulses, a comet is on a collision course with Minerva, and a mysterious beacon crash-lands with a 30,000 year old message from original Ambrose and Kodiak!
On Earth, original Ambrose and Kodiak finally meet. Their interactions are as lovely as those of their clones. They end up on the run with a world war starting, which we already know from the firs t book will destroy all life on Earth. They learn that the pop star who is secretly a revolutionary managed to sabotage the zygotes on the spaceship, because he thought if we can't sustain life on Earth we don't deserve it anywhere. This is why most of the defrosted life died, and the yaks and Yarrow became violent. Ambrose and Kodiak make a run for a beacon launcher, and manage to launch the beacon with instructions on how to reverse the damage.
The title drop is a gut-punch: "the brightness between us" is the flash of the nuke that kills them.
Back on Minerva, Owl manages to find the beacon just in time to drag it into their underground comet shelter. The little family emerges years later to a changed landscape, now with hope of a future.
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Paging Edward Gorey . . .