Trapped


I loved books set in cold environments and I love books where people are trapped, and survival is the only option. I also love all things set in space: Star Trek, Star Wars, etc. So, this was right up my alley. Imagine being on a luxury craft deep in space and you-know-what beings to hit the fan! Something isn't quite right, but you are so far from home, there is nowhere to go and no way out!!!

This really did feel like an homage to The Shining set-in space!

Claire Kovalik and her team pick up a distress signal. Not wanting to go back to Earth, she and her crew decide to investigate. This is their first mistake. What they find is a massive luxury space liner which disappeared twenty years ago. The Aurora, which evokes Titanic vibes, vanished on its maiden tour of the solar system. They board the ship. This is their second mistake.

Goosebumps!

This is where the magic or shall I say chills and thrills begin. There is an underlying sense of unease, dread, and anxiety. They hear things, they see things, words written in blood! This book is atmospheric and dripping with tension. I could feel their fear, their unease, their inner turmoil. What is real and what is not? Are they alone on the ship or is something sinister lurking in the shadows? I was on the edge of my seat waiting to see if Sigourney Weaver and an alien would pop out! Don't worry, they don't but.... anything is possible!

This was a thoroughly enjoyable and gripping read. I was glued to the pages, desperately swiping my kindle, wanting/needing to know just what was going to happen next!

Whew! I can't wait to see what these authors come up with next. Fingers crossed that the next book is in the works!

If you are into deep space chills and thrills, this book is for you!

Atmospheric, Chilling, and hard to put down!


Thank you to Macmillan-Tor/Forge and NetGalley who provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All the thoughts and opinions are my own.

Ahoy there me mateys!  I received an eArc of this sci-fi novel through NetGalley in exchange for me honest musings . . .

I love books about shipwrecks, ghost ships, and ghost stories.  So this was a must read for me.  And it was a lot of fun.  The story follows Claire Kovalik whose crew is on their final mission setting up communication equipment on the far edges of space.  They are about to head out when their ship receives a distress signal.  Nothing should be out here but they investigate and discover a luxury cruise liner, the Aurora, that went missing over 20 years ago with everyone on board long presumed dead.  Why is it so far off course?  The crew wants to claim the ship for salvage and fame.  They don't get what they expect.

I really loved Claire.  She is an unreliable narrator due to past trauma.  Are Claire's ghosts in her head or literal?  I thought the structure of the novel set this up so nicely in that ye start in the present with Claire in hospital, go back into the past, and then get caught back up to the present before moving forward.  I was kept guessing the entire time about both Claire's mental state and if she even understood what the truth was.  It could be frustrating to many readers because not everything is answered.  I, however, thought it keep the tension strung out nicely.

I also thought the horror of the state of the bodies was creepy and fun.  How folks ended up dead was excellent even if the why of it ended up being a minor weak part for me.  That said, I loved the company's attempted cover up and how the plot resolved.  Aye, ye have to suspend disbelief a bit (especially for the final chapters of the book) but it was a fast paced read that I didn't want to put down.  I am so glad to have read this one.

So lastly . . .

Thank ye kindly Tor Nightfire!

This book was awesome! Claire and her team are on a routine mission when they stumble upon a huge unsolved mystery. Spooky things start to haunt them/happen to them as they board the Aurora--are they being haunted or are they losing their minds? I love this genre: spooky space things. I am also really glad that it was "lower" sci-fi and not something I would have to learn a whole culture and language and star system for. I just wanted the spooky space things and this absolutely delivered. The characters were a little bit flat/at times felt like they were there to serve the plot instead of the other way around, but I found myself genuinely caring for them which is hard to get me to do. I think my biggest gripe with the story was that I needed the spookiness to start a little bit earlier and be a bit more prolonged. It feels like we don't really get much spooky happenings, which is what I really wanted out of this book. But the setting and tone was immaculate! I would highly recommend this work!

A horror book with the premise of the titanic crossed with ghost ship meets space?! SIGN ME UP.

The first half had me totally sucked in, buckled up and ready for a wild ride. The descriptions of the ship left me eerily unsettled and I could picture myself walking through the halls of the ship with them. The second half lost me a little bit with the pretty much complete dropping of the alternating timelines, something that I found really kept me turning pages in the first half. At times the second half felt super drawn out and I was listening at a faster speed just so I could find out what happened. Overall though I enjoyed this one and will definitely recommend it to my fellow sci fi horror lovers!

Thank you NetGalley and TorNightfire for this ARC in exchange for my review!

I had no idea that horror in space could be so good. I never took into account the tight spaces or isolation.
This is a very good read. Once I started, I couldn't stop until I was done.
The main character is well fleshed-out, but the supporting cast could have used some additional attention.
I wish the author would have skipped the epilogue, because this story would have been fine without the happy little bow on the end.

Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes is a sci fi ghost story meets mystery set on an abandoned supership in deep space. The main character Claire and others experience haunting-like symptoms and have to try to discern between reality while unraveling a gruesome murder mystery.

This definitely has some very adult triggers so be aware of violence, gore, and general spookiness in this book. The atmosphere is dark and there can be times where this book really lagged on me for plot. I respect the main character was going through her own mental issues, but sometimes the first person perspective and unreliable narrator can take over so much the story itself is lost in the folds. I wanted more from this story and the ending was not something I was extremely thrilled over.

All in all, it's a solid read. I would recommend this for fans of spooky horror or dread. I would not recommend this if solid plot is a must for you.

If you’re in the mood for spine tingling scifi-horror, Dead Silence does not disappoint.

You follow Claire Kovalik, an emotionally avoidant leader of a beacon repair crew who is about to be out of a job due to her employer automating her role. When her crew picks up a signal from a distress beacon and follow it to the space-equivalent of the Titanic, they end up being the ones to find out what killed the almost 700 lost souls on board— for better or for worse.

This was such a fantastic horror read. S.A. Barnes knows exactly how to set my teeth on edge and my hair on end. I was tense and anxious alongside our protagonist, even when I was still asking myself if I was more worried about ghosts, aliens, malicious tech or just other human beings. The twists were well executed, the plot engaging and the characters compelling-- whether they were morally terrible or just jerks. (Here’s looking at you, Voller.)

The Aurora, the luxury space-cruiser that most of the novel takes place on is a haunting setting, contrasting obscenely luxurious excess with gruesome amounts of violent death frozen in time. Like the crew, you never feel safe aboard it, and I think Barnes’ ability to make you feel like something is just… off with the setting really makes the story sing.

Kovalik is a fantastic unreliable narrator and it’s absolutely genius that this ends up being a strength of hers, rather than a setback. There was a very satisfying balance between her driving her own story and her learning to rely on others as she grows over the course of the book.

This was a great read through and through and gave me exactly what I was looking for going into it.

Real Rating: 4.5/5 Stars

This book was well worth every minute I spent reading it, and it lived up to all the hype I saw and heard prior to its release. I want to call it “Titanic in Space”, but then I remember I always call that one Doctor Who episode by that name (it’s really called “Voyage of the Damned”, but I can’t ever remember that). In reality, it kind of reminds me of a mix of a gothic ghost story involving shipwrecks, mixed with the horror elements of the movies “Event Horizon” and “Alien”, then mix it with the greed element involving any hidden treasure and/or corporate cover-ups.

I’ll be the first to admit I don’t read much sci-fi horror. It’s not that I don’t like the genre; it’s more that a lot of the genre isn’t accessible to a reader like me. It tends to be longer and denser material than I like to read when it comes to pleasure reading. This book, though, doesn’t require that sort of quiet concentration one must hold onto for long periods of time like some heavier sci-fi tomes require. This is a fun, dark, scary, suspenseful, tense, propelling read that keeps you turning pages as you watch our FMC, Claire, tell her bosses the story of how her crew small of five people managed to find the Aurora, the one and only luxury space cruise ship, which hasn’t been seen since it left on its maiden voyage some 20 years prior… And how, once they did find it, she seemed to be the only one who made it onto an escape pod to be rescued and come back alive. She’s definitely not okay, but she’s alive. But neither her bosses, nor the Aurora, are done with her yet.

Claire is a brilliantly characterized and written FMC. She is an unreliable narrator who knows she is utterly unreliable in an unapologetic and earnest manner. This differs from unreliable narrators we find in some dark satires and psychological thrillers in that her unreliability comes not from narcissism or delusional grandeur, but from the fact that she knows she has been mentally unwell since she was young and knows her mind cannot be trusted sometimes to show the whole truth. She also knows her account of what happened aboard the Aurora is deeply flawed and speckled with the mental health issues she brought onboard with her, the trauma she incurred while there, the physical trauma she sustained while onboard, and the trauma she feels in the aftermath. Claire is otherwise very self-effacing and blunt.

The prose Barnes writes in between the action and the horror is definitely beautiful and evocative. You can see the gore, the rooms, the costumes. You can feel the claustrophobia, the hair brushing past you, the tinnitus in your ear. It’s a gift not every sci-fi writer has. I definitely noticed and didn’t take it for granted.

The whole reason, and only reason only, this book lost a half point was because I found it rather predictable. I called the turn from the beginning. I don’t like having to take off anything because of it, but I was so disappointed to be right after everything in this book. I just got there and felt a little disappointed. But otherwise, everything else was fan-flippity-tastic. I highly recommend it.

I was insanely excited when I first heard about this book! I read Stacey Kade’s The Ghost and the Goth series a couple of years ago, and I really loved it! (Well, I read the first two books... but we’re not talking about my terrible habit of not finishing series 😅) I was particularly excited to learn that she would be writing something a little different than she usually does with this adult sci-fi horror, and I gotta say, I really enjoyed it!

Right from the start, things were pretty sketchy. I mean, they get a distress signal from a ship that wasn’t even on the emergency channel. And then they find out that said distress signal is coming from a long-lost ship?? I would NOPE right out of there! Lol. This ship gave me some strong Titanic vibes, but a spaceship, and I loved that! That, coupled with the creepy atmosphere, was probably my favorite thing about this. Back when this spaceship was inhabited, it sounded absolutely stunning! And while it was fun imagining it as it was, as a horror fan, it was even more fun seeing it now, abandoned with the possibility of being haunted. Lol. I’m weird... what can I say? 😆

That being said, this book wasn’t terribly scary for me. But to be fair, horror novels pretty much never scare me, so take all this with a grain of salt. It also wasn’t too gory, but, again, grain of salt. We all have our limits, but I want ALL the spooks and gore! Lol. (Okay, there was this one scene with an eyeball that was very 😨 Sooo yeahhh lol).

The mystery surrounding the ship was very intriguing. And then the characters that board the ship start experiencing... things. And that was very engaging as well. I was wondering whether said mystery would be more psychological or supernatural/alien in nature—it definitely leans more one way, even though I was hoping it would lean the other. But I’m not gonna lie, the thing that actually happened on that ship was so fucked up that I didn’t even mind 😆 It was insane and I did not see it coming!

I adore horror, as I’ve mentioned, and lately, I’ve just been on a sci-fi kick, and this book was just the perfect thing to satisfy that craving! The story was interesting, the plot twists surprising, the setting incredible, and the overall atmosphere of this setting was super creepy! The book is told with flashbacks, and because I was so invested in the past and what happened on the ship, I almost feel like the present-day POV was kinda spoiler-y? I just didn’t want to know anything! But once the flashback caught up with the present day, things started making sense. I was also relatively meh about the characters... I mean, they weren’t terrible, but there also weren’t any favorites. BUT I did enjoy the book overall! It was a really good sci-fi book with horror elements I can’t help but love.

Space horror is one of those genres that I love, but don’t read as often as I’d like. So when I saw Dead Silence, I was so excited to pick it up – and I was not disappointed!

The story takes off right away, while at the same time introducing all of the characters with ease. This book has one of my favorite beginnings, where you learn from the start that something’s gone wrong, but don’t know all of the details. And the questions introduced at the beginning combined with the fast pacing made it really hard to put this book down.

I also really liked the way the larger corporations in this book play into setting the stage and some of the greater conflicts that exist in this story. Dead Silence feels like a great book for sci-fi readers that are intimidated by endless worldbuilding, as you get just enough to the setting to make the world feel real while also being able to follow the story easily. There’s no complex scientific explanations, and as much as I love these in books, I loved being able to take a backseat on that with this book and still feel like all of it was plausible.

One of my favorite aspects of space horror is that it plays on our fears of the great unknown, and Dead Silence does this so well. There’s an infinite number of possibilities of what realistically could be happening on the Aurora, and that played into the suspense so well all the way to the end.

I highly recommend Dead Silence to fiction readers that enjoy horror and are looking for a sci-fi setting that’s not too heavily detailed, and a book that’s hard to put down.

This book perfectly balances horror and suspense. It was so fresh for me because I don't usually read a lot of sci-fi but I just couldn't put this one down.
Claire Kovalic is in charge of a small space crew doing repairs when they received a distress signal. Of course they went to help and at first everything looks rosy and the crew thinks they've hit the jackpot. They've found a lost ship, the luxurious Aurora that disappeared 20 years ago. They've hit gold, but THEN, whispers in the dark, unexplainable hallucinations. AH MA GAWD!!! That's just the beginning.
🎉🎇🎇🎉
The book is so good. While it's told from Claire's POV, it wasn't lacking in coverage. Claire is also a bit of an oddity which makes her recounting of events so much more exciting.

Here are a few things to expect:
🎇Mutha-effin ghosts in space
🎇Skeevy power hungry men
🎇Badass Claire Kovalic
🎇Dual timelines
🎇Interesting Narrator backstory
🎇Action, suspense and mystery
🎇Epic Revenge!!!
💫🎉💫🎉
This book didn't miss a damn thing, everything I wanted and hoped for was right there, the horror, the gore the mystery🥰🥰. This is a book I would pay to see made into a film, it's right up my alley. I highly recommend this one. Top of the pile for February so far.

Dead Silence is a great combination of science fiction and horror. Barnes does a wonderful job of settling up a creepy atmosphere that is just realistic enough to get under your skin and stick with you. In the beginning, I believe that the "unlikeability" of the heroine was perhaps overly stressed. The attempts to make her seem wholly distant or unattached rang hollow as the story progressed. Overall this is a great title for anyone who is a fan of horror and/or space.

I enjoyed Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes. The characters were engaging and the setting was deeply unsettling in an awesome way. I was somewhat disappointed by the focus on romance in certain portions of the book, but that is a personal preference and not a reflection of the book's quality. I enjoyed the resolution to the book's mystery and would read another S. A. Barnes title on a heartbeat.

My thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for offering me a free copy on exchange for a honest review.

This was SO good! This space horror was like a movie in my head with the hauntings of The Shining and the glamorous doom of the Titanic.
Claire has her own demons, but if she can remember what happened to her crew, maybe she can save herself. I loved the jumps from past to present and back again, as it just escalated the tension. I raced through this very much wanting to find out what happened to her crew and the bigger mystery- what happened to the lost ship Aurora. Very well paced and plotted! I was drawn in fast and didn't want to put it down. I'll definitely look for more books by this author!

On the edge of space, preparing for their trip back home, Claire and her crew stumble upon an old distress beacon. After checking it out, they discover it isn't just any wreckage or abandoned ship. It's the Aurora: a famous luxury cruise liner that went missing more than twenty years ago - gone without a trace. Fueled by the promise of money and fame, the crew boards the abandoned ship to collect items to provide substantial proof and lay claim. But soon after boarding, it becomes apparent that the dead bodies on board didn't die from starvation or lack of oxygen. Something is amiss on the ship, and even the crew is starting to feel its effects.

I LOVED this book. So much so that it will most definitely be making my favorites of the year list. The combination of horror and science fiction with a slice of thriller was perfect. It was spooky, weird, confusing, graphicly disturbing, and claustrophobic on so many freakin' levels.

You have the vibes of "Titanic - in space - meets The Shining", but my mind immediately went to Ghost Ship, Event Horizon, and Aliens. Tell me Claire didn't remind you of a slightly more unhinged (okay, completely unhinged) version of Ripley from Aliens! Everyone is like: let's go check this out to see what happened! And she's like: DON'T DO IT - YOU WILL DIE! and then ends up tagging along anyway... YES. I LOVE IT. But minus the aliens. Sorry, no aliens here. Just creepy ghosts and paranoid thoughts.

I loved the timeline alternating between past and present, but I wish it was distributed evenly throughout the book. The second half of the book revolved around the present timeline, and while it was just as engrossing as the first half, I wanted more time with the crew. Even though they were kinda going crazy and shit was hitting the fan... I just didn't feel as strong of a connection or pull towards them. However, Claire's overall development stole the show, reminding me more and more of Ripley. Her character is front and center, rightfully so, as her traumatic past collides with the nightmare of her current day life. I remember distinctly thinking: Is she crazy? Was that real? Are we even in a present timeline? Is that person dead? It sounds like a simple, cut-and-dry ghost story, but it is anything but that.

Someone needs to talk to someone about making this into a movie. STAT.

I highly recommend this for fans of: horror, science fiction, the glorious combination of space horror, horror movies, Ghost Ship, Event Horizon, Aliens, ghosts, unreliable narrators, questionable reality, conspiracies, greedy corporations doing stupid shit and finding out, and graphic descriptions of death/body parts.

Thank you to Tor Nightfire for the digital copy for review. All opinions are my own.

Excellent read. I’ve been reading a lot of thrillers and didn’t realize how much I missed sci-fi horror. The story is interesting and well-written, and the pace is moving both in action and plot. All of the characters are extremely well-drawn, with memorable personalities and traits. I appreciate how cleverly the author was able to maintain the mystery of the Aurora.

Will definitely read more from this author.

Thank you to NetGalley, Macmillan-Tor/Forge and S.A. Barnes for a copy of "Dead Silence" in exchange of an honest review.

What a thrill of a ride! I absolutely devoured this book. This is a locked room mystery novel that gave me Alfred Hitchcock and Twilight Zone vibes. It's everything I want in a novel such as this. It had me biting my nails until the very last page. If anyone has other books like this to recommend, send them my way because this was such a fun read for me!

A thrilling blend of science-fiction and horror that will satisfy readers of both genres, S.A. Barnes' Dead Silence is one of the first truly fun reads I've had this year. The story follows a salvage crew who boards a long abandoned luxury cruiser, naturally landing right in the middle of an absolute nightmare. If it sounds like the film Ghost Ship in space, you're not too far off. I had a hard time putting it down, and it grabbed me by the neck and pulled me out of a reading slump. A true treat for genre fans!

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Nightfire for providing me with an ARC.

The book itself is being massively mismarketed as a horror/thriller sci-fi. Yes, that is the setting but the writing and focus definitely feel more like a YA romance than anything else (even though the characters are in their 30s). The horror elements were good I just wish I didn't have to wade through so many other things I didn't enjoy or expect to get to them and it didn't feel worth it.

5 stars

This is a fantastic sci-fi horror novel, perfect for anyone whose favorite horror stories involve isolation and dread.

Have you ever seen footage of a documentary about the Mariana Trench, camera drones peering through pitch black water and illuminating, mere feet away, some unfamiliar creature out of the dark? Or film from James Cameron’s exploratory vessels, sending a beam of light slowly over the wreckage of the Titanic? That’s what reading this novel feels like. It’s the story of a small crew on the edges of known space, uncontactable, discovering a wreckage that feels haunted in every sense of the word.

I loved it, and I cannot recommend this novel to isolation horror fans enough.