how the human heart perseveres in spite of true loneliness, desperation, unimaginable grief, and has the capacity to remain tender even in the harshest circumstances. Additionally, there is a multinational corporation that seems to have incredible power on Earth: The Cusk Corporation. I went into this book knowing absolutely nothing other than the fact that this book had ✨ gays in space✨ but. oh my goodness. I am so glad that was all I knew because this book was such a thrilling, evocative, and wild ride that had me literally YELLING. I loved this book so much.

for months after finishing tdou, i searched for words to convey the extent of my love for it, to do justice to how deeply kodiak and ambrose have burrowed into my heart. how i did not anticipate for this book to impact me so deeply but not a day goes by where i don’t think about it. and yet, only elevator music. TDOU is splendidly written and a full five-star read, although I l think this should not have been marketed as a YA book. In my opinion, the story would have been even better if those two boys had been two twenty-somethings. But who cares? Because I already added this book to my 2022 most memorable reads shelf! I’m splitting this review into three parts: the worldbuilding, the plot, and the characters/relationship. These are probably going in decreasing importance for how they affected my rating, i.e. the worldbuilding was the big one, and the characters were pretty much negligible in comparison. But all of them contributed to the 3.5 star rating. The story progresses with both guys teaming up against their ship's OS who has eyes and ears everywhere and who can even get physical by using one of the Rovers - small wall-bound robots that look like baseballs with tentacles.Follows Ambrose, who wakes up aboard the Coordinated Endeavour tasked with flying to the moon Titan to rescue his sister - but has no memory of the launch. When he discovers that he's not alone on the ship, the two boys must work together to survive the journey - and learn that love may be the only way to stay alive. breathtaking how perfectly eliot schrefer has crafted this book. just two boys on a spaceship with a deep sense of unease - a seemingly simple plot that ends up being so heartbreakingly thrilling. both epic & intimate; speculative & achingly familiar.

First the sudden awareness that they're only clones with a short life span until they manage to complete tasks that the ship cannot handle itself. Then the violent deaths over and over and over again. Losing characters that grew on me, only to have the same guys - but different copies - wake up again, starting from zero. i find it hard to conjure words for what is definitely possibly going to be my favorite book of 2022. i don’t think i can find another book…. that makes me question everything, that makes me love, and feel afraid for everything i’ve grown close to. there’s so much i can’t say about this, there’s so much that is only for you to discover alone. but there’s also so much i want to say. this book is, as i like to call it, existentialism space gays. i don’t know how else to describe it. to quote my lovely friend cel about this book, “so often i’d would be mid-sentence, going about my silly little life, and then kodiak and ambrose would pop into my head asking whether i am truly alive and then ‘oh no i can’t breathe i must lie down’”. (she said it perfectly.) As I said, this is probably a consequence of the way the plot was structured. Because the first part at least had to span a fair while to set everything up, the relationship development seemed to happen quite abruptly. I think this is probably because of the fact there were so many small timeskips, but they weren’t done in a way that was necessarily obvious. So it went from something like Kodiak refusing to eat meals with Ambrose, to suddenly he’s eating them and having conversations. Minerva Cusk was the first human sent out to colonize Saturn’s moon, Titan. When she sends out a distress signal, her brother Ambrose is the astronaut chosen to rescue her.This book is truly bringing high quality science fiction content to the MM genre and is a must read for all MM fans. i hope this was somewhat comprehensible and didn’t scare you away. i hope you’ll read this? if you do i’d love for you to come into my dms and give me your live reactions. it’s a wild time out here. Grasping the full concept of the story feels like a religious revelation somehow. Knowing that mankind starts anew governed by - literally - Adam and Steve, is such a powerful thought. Generations of humans who will wonder where they came from, who will share tales of the epic love story of their same sex parents that will eventually melt into sacred lore, about gods/ancestors who came down from Heaven.