Outstanding science fiction horror novel, up there with the child’s of Stephen King. I deeply loved the frontier setting of open space. There is something innately horrifying about the vast starlit void. Though I liked the supernatural elements coupled with science fiction logic and space horrors, I would have preferred the author pick on track—either go fully paranormal with a female lead who can read minds and see ghosts, or have the manufactured ghost sightings be a part of a sonic weapon. To have both present in the same novel felt disjointed, but it didn’t lessen my love! Definitely suggesting this book for purchase at my branch, for all science fiction horror buffs. ,

This was some fun space drama but unfortunately it was a little too light on horror, especially since I was expecting some full on horror. Also, the romance could've been excluded.

This was such a fun space horror story! I loved the creepy Titanic in space vibes, and the characters slowly losing their minds and succumbing to the danger was so much fun to read. I do wish more time had been spent with the original crew, and I thought the explanation was a little disappointing, but overall I loved this story!

First off, thank you so much for this early access ARC!
WHAT A SLEEPER AGENT!
5⭐️!!!

I absolutely LOVED this book, and I'm wondering why more people aren't talking about it??? I felt like this was a great digestible sci-fi, with a thrilling and engaging plot, rich descriptions, & highly relatable/ lovable characters. I loved that this sci-fi setting was contained, so we got mention of the world, but the main focus was the mystery and the thriller aspects. There's not much else I can say other than if you're a sci-fi thriller reader, YOU MUST READ THIS BOOK! It was so good.

Full thoughts are in our Netgalley vlog on Youtube.

xx
-Christine

As I approach my mid-30’s, I see my attention span shorten and with it, my desire to sit down and read a book. I find myself taking months to finish, or even worse, a novel is put down to never be picked up again. Yet, every so often I find one that reinvigorates my passion for reading and turns it from a task to be completed, to a pleasure to be enjoyed. Last month, I was in the enviable position to read Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes, and damn if I didn’t burn through this book like a man on a mission. This particular title fell into my lap after I was prompted with the terms ‘space’ and ‘horror,’ much like a dog responds to the words ‘walk’ and ‘treat.’ This particular review will remain spoiler-free and I encourage our readers to catch the full interview with the author that will premiere this Friday, but for now, strap in for a spine-tingling tale that leaves you questioning your own mind by the end.

Our story begins with protagonist, Claire, our team leader who has the steadfast determination of Alien’s Ellen Ripley, a parallel that lent credence to my love for the character. She finds herself captive at a corporate rehab facility in Florida for space-explorers whose minds have been swallowed by the vast expanse of our universe. A routine emerges of her being interviewed by a couple bigwigs looking for answers about the fate of her crew, and their astonishing discovery of the ‘ghost’ ship Aurora, that had been MIA for 20 years. The story then takes turn flipping back and forth between present and past, until they converge into an epic Act 3 that will leave you guessing until the last sentence. This non-linear storytelling is back-boned by our unreliable narrator, allowing for readers to never be quite sure what is really going on, and keeping each page a tension filled exploration. The story and characters are unique, with some definitive homages to past films of similar missions that had gone awry, but ultimately, this novel feels like a breath of fresh air within the genre.

From Event Horizon to Aliens, Ghost Ship to Titanic, it is evident that S.A. Barnes (AKA Stacey Kade) did her homework when it came to writing Dead Silence. It’s become increasingly difficult over the years for book scares to truly land with me, especially when the world we live in comes with its own daily brand of horrors, but kudos to Barnes for conjuring the unrelenting uneasiness that plagued me page-by-page. This book had me flipping the lights on quickly before entering rooms and second-guessing every noise in my own home, but I wasn’t ready to put it down out of sheer determination to see it through to the end. Another driving force for my enjoyment of this book was our team leader/ass-kicker Claire. We have been desperate for the next Ripley, a character than can transcend outdated stereotypes and I think Claire might be the protagonist to fill those shoes. This is the type of novel you hope to be picked up for a film or perhaps a mini-series to allow the ideas to be completely fleshed out. Whether it be kindle or hardcover, lights on or off, it’s time to visit your local book depository and get your copy of Dead Silence.

Book Review: Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes

Dead Silence is an adult science fiction novel set in space in the year 2149. It leans heavily into horror and the thriller genres as well.
Claire Kovalik is a team leader of five working on communication systems in the far reaches of the universe. This will be their last job before the crew is permanently replaced with machines and they are sent back to the Verux corporate headquarters. But before they can head back they hear a ship’s distress signal and feel obligated to come to aid. To Claire’s shock the source is the Aurora, a luxury passenger ship (modeled after a current day ocean cruise liner) gone missing for twenty years and considered lost forever. But as Claire and her crew board the Aurora to further investigate they encounter a ship of horrors filled with dead passengers and unexplainable signs of violence. With only bits of video footage and messages left behind the crew will try to piece together what happened while they steer the ship home to collect the reward. But what killed the passengers isn’t finished yet and Claire’s crew also begin to succumb to the same symptoms.
I really enjoyed this novel and thought it was well written and engaging. There was just enough action and suspense to keep my interest but it still had plenty of room for character and world building. Although Claire is smart and resourceful she isn’t this amazing “Mary Sue” character but instead a fully developed but flawed human being. As the only survivor of an outbreak at an outpost when she was a child the guilt and PTSD are still with her every day. She struggles with moving forward in her life but is also dreading a future at a desk. Intimacy and having people love her doesn’t come easily which is why it’s so heartbreaking to watch her try to deal with the memories of losing everyone as a child and then decades later facing another tragedy on board the Aurora.
I highly recommend this one to horror and science fiction fans and I look forward to more books from S.A. Barnes.

Dead Silence has been described as Titanic meets The Shining. Between that description and the book cover, I knew I had to get my hands on this book! A space crew discovers a lost luxury liner. When they board the ship, things get weird, really weird. I don't want to give any spoilers, so I will just say if you are a fan of sci-fi and horror, definitely check this one out. Bonus points that both the author and the main character of the novel are women, a refreshing change from the usual male-centric sci-fi. The book is scary fun and I will recommend it to my patrons.

I am a library associate and received an advance copy from #NetGalley. Opinions are my own.

I finished this book in one sitting! I loved the true sci-fi feel of this book. Following our main character Claire, we are on her last run as a team lead before being basically decommissioned, her job being replaced by robots. She is a somewhat unreliable narrator due to traumatic events in her childhood, leading her to have severe PTSD and hallucinations of people she has loved and lost. Her group of ragtag communications experts come across an old distress signal at the end of their commweb, and decide to check it out. What ensues will have you second guessing every character interaction, and asking yourself what is real. I only wish we got to the reveal at the end a little more quickly and that the motivation behind what happened had a little more time to truly rip my heart out. Plus, I wish we could continue the story well past the last page!

This copy was kindly given to be by Netgalley and the publisher to read for review. All opinions are my own.

Solid 4.5. I really enjoyed this which I found surprising because typically Sci-Fi isn't a genre I enjoy but the scary/horror aspect of it combined with the constriction of physical space, isolation that comes with being in space sucked me in. I flew through this book, another one that I read in a day but I was a little disappointed in the real horror/suspense feeling that I was hoping to find and found greatly lacking.

I’ve remarked on how my movie habits tend to lean towards horror with a heavy helping of science fiction, and I can start to feel my reading habit slide in that direction too. Horror is the proverbial jam to the peanut butter that is science fiction. That is to say, yeah, I read another spooky space book, and while it isn’t a tour de force, Dead Silence, by S.A. Barnes, is a hell of a good time that delivers on the tropes that misses some horror by not expanding on them too much.

Claire Kovalik is about to be out of a job. Her way of life is about to be made obsolete as she and her crew deliver a maintenance bot to one of the last communications arrays at the edge of the solar system. Gone is her ability to isolate herself from the rest of humanity and exist on the outskirts. That is until they receive a distress call from the Aurora, a luxury space cruise liner that went missing over twenty years ago. Denied a loan to start her own interstellar shipping company, Claire and her crew figure their best shot at living a little better is to bring home the Aurora. The reason for its disappearance is a total mystery, but the drudgery of having a planetbound life scares Claire even more. However, hallucinations from Claire’s past start to haunt her mind in ways they haven’t before as they approach the ship. What caused the Aurora to leave the solar system? And did anyone or anything survive the decades of isolation?

Dead Silence is an incredibly fun, and at times, creepy ghost ship in space story. Barnes absolutely nails it with a campy premise perforated by moments of fear. The crew’s first entry into the ship is quiet and crawls under the reader’s skin. The rolling set of problems the crew encountered as they tried to bring the cruise liner home had me cackling with delight more often than it sent shivers down my spine. But there were times I felt a growing sense of unease that couldn’t be shaken until the next campy trope was revealed. Barnes’ writing allowed me to have fun while also building the crew’s growing desperation. The need to constantly justify doing something a little more stupid, a little more dangerous drives the narrative, keeping things exciting without setting off the “get out of there” alarm bells too often.

I think one place where the formula felt a little too thick was in the characterization. Claire worked well as the protagonist through the narrow view by which the reader experiences the story. She’s questionable and believable in equal measure giving everything a “something’s fucky” vibe. I do wish there was a little more characterization making me feel haunted by her.

However, the rest of the crew are maxed out tropes, which made their search and the scares fun, but I never felt particularly tied to them. There were some you felt bad for, and some you couldn’t wait to see what trouble they’d end up in. It’s a good balance if you’re looking for fun, but it didn’t really ratchet up the tension in the long run. The two detectives in the b-plot were fine enough, and arguably better drawn, but they also didn’t add much. Instead of casting doubt on Claire’s story, I often felt that they made me want to defend her. Which made the horror more believable in some ways, but also amplified the need to solve the mystery as the sole origin of the horror, which feels counterintuitive.

Don’t get me wrong, Barnes knows how to unravel the mystery while building an atmosphere of dread. But the more the mystery is revealed, the more the horror begins to feel diminished. In theory, I would expect the terror is supposed to be weighted differently, centered on the cause instead of the effect. Instead, in Dead Silence, it felt like the truth was setting me free of the nightmare. While the reveal is still awful, it’s sort of cut short by some of the other narrative and character moments that it occurs in. It was too much of a tonal shift for me to really buy in and left a sour taste in my mouth.

Dead Silence is a science fiction horror that has fun with its premise while delivering some good atmosphere and the occasional scare. It’s not pushing the boundaries in any way, and that’s okay. It was the perfect read when I picked it up, allowing me to have fun without needing to pick it apart while I was reading it. But after a few weeks of thought that’s all it remained. It’s spooky in the right ways, so grab some popcorn, a cup of tea, and snuggle in for a fun ride.

Rating: Dead Silence 6.5/10
-Alex

An ARC of this book was provided to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The thoughts on this book are my own.

Going into this books, I was looking for a plotline similar to 2002 movie Ghost Ship with Julianna Margulies - and very excited for such a thing. But this book really goes above and beyond. It reads more like Ghost Ship meets The Shining, meets something that is entirely its own. The twists were impressively executed, the perfect combination of not seeing it coming while still having the bulletin board of clues to back it up. It was scary, it was endearing, it was riveting and mysterious and downright enjoyable. I cannot recommend it enough.

I am not typically a fan of horror or sci-fi, but I was drawn in by the description and I ended up loving this book! I couldn't put it down.

This is probably going to be one of my favorite books of 2022 given the fact that it's been weeks since I read it, and I'm still thinking about so much of the story. I read some of my pal's reviews about disliking this one or finding the romance to be an unnecessary element to the story, and I'm not singling anyone out at all because to each their own opinion, but oh my gosh I could not disagree more!!

This was EVERYTHING to me, I loved it so much. I have this really strange, life-long obsession with the Titanic tragedy, and because of it, with anything really ocean-tragedy-related. As a kid, my mom joked that I probably died on the Titanic in a past life because of how completely absorbed I'd get into any book or documentary I could find - and this was years before Leo DiCaprio graced my screen, so it wasn't because of Hollywood or anything you'd expect, haha. I don't know why this weird obsession lingered, but because of it, I'm ALWAYS immediately drawn to things with big cruiseliner type of ships in the story - especially in the horror genre, hello GHOST SHIP, which I love & has one of the absolute best opening movie sequences I've ever seen (the wire!!!).

Another thing I've loved since I was very small is sci-fi, so imagine my delight when I read the synopsis of this one before it released: space horror with a cruise-y spaceship in space?? Dead folks on board? A MYSTERY?? I nearly fainted from anticipation, lol.

I managed to save it for March to read with the Ladies of Horror Fiction monthly pick, and you can see how hard that must've been for me 'cause I finished it less than 3 days into the month, lol. Once I started, I didn't want it to end & hated putting it down for work or sleep - it was so good!

I love the main character and how much she's still impacted by the trauma she experienced as a child; the guilt and shame she carries with her are so, so believable and I really related to them, having dealt with some terrible shit of my own as a kid - albeit not quite the same, lol. The fact that the author slowly reveals the backstory of our main character was a really impactful touch - I think it would've given too much away to tell it all at once early on, and we're able to see bit by bit the effects that the past have on her in present day, even without fully knowing what that past is.

The romance between the MC & her crewman might not have been "necessary", but honestly? If I were spending that much time in cramped quarters with a single dude I was into, I'm sure it'd escalate into something a little more -- thinking that romance has "no place in horror" is an outdated concept tbh, and I'm tired of it. Let the woman get her business when she wants to in between the gore & bloody socialites - what's wrong with that?? Damn.

Anyway, I also really loved the great imagery of the ship itself. So many things from when the crew first spots the ship - the sheer size of the thing, not to mention what they discover on board - was just so, so much fun to read. I wish it could've gone on forever! I need more spacey cruise ship books, haha.

I will say that this one had a lot of elements of things that I've already got experience with, but that's likely because of my specific interest in water-related horror stuff; for example, I'm not positive, but I feel like the author might've been at least partially influenced by the SS Ourang Medan legend, which is about a ghost ship & also inspired the Dark Pictures Anthology game Man of Medan. I also again have to mention the similarities to the Ghost Ship movie because, although not set in space, the ghostliness of being on the ship itself & how creepy it is feels super similar here. Even if those things weren't influences, if you liked this book, I recommend reading more into them / playing the game!!

Overall, if the fangirling about this wasn't enough, I'll just recap with that I loved it & am glad it exists. I need more spooky sci-fi in my life!

I received an ARC copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

I enjoyed reading this book. The story reminds me of the horror video game called Dead Space.

The setting is creepy and suspenseful. The characters are interesting. There are twists and turns that make you want to keep reading to find out what happens next.

I was expecting a monster or virus to cause the chaos on the luxury ship they find floating in space. Instead something else causes all the trouble. It would have been scarier if there were creatures on the ship. It's more of a psychological horror story. But the author does a great job with the story.

If you like a good space horror story, then you will enjoy reading this book.

3.5 stars

It really just came down to personal preference as to why this wasn’t a 4 star read. I simply didn’t like the direction it went in the end. Otherwise, I loved the creepy setting and the fact that it took place in space. Something I don’t read very often, but would like to.

Remember back a few years ago when there was one amazing sci-fi blockbuster after another? I have been craving something similar for a while now but nothing has been able to top those. Enter: DEAD SILENCE.

Full of twists, jump scares and mystery, DEAD SILENCE is creepy, sci-fi horror at it's best (and exactly what I wanted!!) I binged this one because I was unable to put it down (I even stayed up past my "bed time" to finish it.)

I hope to see more science/horror from this author in the future #autobuyauthor

Thank you to Netgalley for my #arc

CREEPY GOOD. This was such a good read. I loved everything about it. The narration was fantastic. It was creepy and unnerving.

Thanks to NetGalley and Tor Nightfire for an ARC of this novel.

I was intrigued to request this novel based on the description, especially The Shining meets The Titanic tag.

A space crew on their last voyage discovers a luxurious cruise ship that's been missing for 20 years. When they board the ship to claim their finders' rights, they quickly realize that the mystery of what happened to the passengers is more unfathomable and disturbing than what they imagined. Soon, the crew faces new horrors of their own, facing the ominous presence amongst them.

Readers who enjoy sci-fi horror will find this novel thrilling and chilling. The setting and plot set up imagery easily visioned as the Titantic as a haunted spaceship with questionable characters that will be loved or hated.

A great mix of sci-fi and horror on Titanic (but not titanic). This is an edge of your seat, what the hell is going on kind of story. I'm a big fan of unreliable narrators and keeping the mystery going until the end and that's just what this is.

I enjoyed the characters and the slight romance, which didn't take over the entire story. It was perfect for the storyline and added that tiny bit of hope that thisbdyiry needed.

It was twisty, and had the creep factor, as for the horror, I wish it was a bit more. I'd say this is a great start for anyone just getting into horror. It definitely made me not ever want to go on a luxury space cruise...

started out good with the feel of event horizon then something happened, it took a turn and it just seemed to lose its spookiness, like it went from horror to nothing. 😭😭😭😭😭