CW: trauma/PTSD, hallucinations, delusions, paranoia, suicide, body horror, gore

The horror elements were on point: from the unique terrors of zero gravity and no atmosphere on the other side of a few inches of metal to frozen floating bodies (!!!) to dark corridors and sealed doors and body horror galore.

However, it was pretty slow, and I really didn't like the structure and the way mental health/trauma was handled. With the structure, by having the story told in two alternating timeliness (then and now), you know that Claire survives. This takes away a lot of the tension from the scenes where spooky stuff is going down on the ghost ship because you know, at the very least, that she's alive. As for mental health... Well, Claire survived some pretty epic trauma as a child and that colors her every interaction. Her experience eventually turns into a "handy quirk" to help her through current trauma (which, yikes) and serves to cast doubt on literally everything she says and does. We basically just get to watch a whole bunch of people gaslight her and call her crazy (not least herself).

Also... I don't want anything resembling a romance or romantic pairing or whatever in my scifi horror. Maybe that's a personal preference, but it feels cheap when the only person in the whole book who respects Claire is also the one who kisses her.

Haunted house meets scifi is a match made in heaven, and Barnes has some great ideas that make for exceptional pacing and character. The story-arc itself is reminiscent of Event Horizon or Aliens more than the promised mix of Titanic x The Shining, though it still made for a cinematic experience that's just compulsively readable.

A space thriller is always an interesting subject to read about, but it is one that is surprisingly easy to mess up. Maybe that is due to big hits like Aliens being the pinnacle of the genre, but I find that it is hard to find a good space thriller that totally grips me and, unfortunately, this is no exception.

While I wouldn't say that this was a bad book, nothing about this really spoke to me, and nothing was able to redeem the aspects that I didn't like. As such, my rating is more on the generous side, giving it three stars instead of a two and a half.

My gripe with this book comes down to the fact that unreliable characters are not my cup of tea and, to my dismay, our main character fits the bill exactly. If you don't like the output in which the story is told, odds are you are not going to enjoy the story as a whole, and that is mostly the case here.


Plot:

This is one of those stories where we start in the middle, work out way back to the beginning and then the end. I find that, while this is a fairly common format to follow, it does make forming an attachment to the characters hard. That is especially the case when right off the bat you know that most of the characters are dead.

We have a rough start that doesn't smooth out for the entirety of the book. You are initially not given a lot of context about the story, only knowing that a crew, led by our main character, are leaving their mission site K-147 when they stumble upon a ghost signal coming from an unknown origin. We don't know where they're going or what they were doing which, while the details may be minor, are context that I would have liked.

After this point, it takes a long time for the book to pick up its pace. Things were happening, but at the same time, not a lot of things were happening if you know what I mean. The story was progressing, but there wasn't much substance. Once the story kicked into high gear, I still wasn't very satisfied as the story ended up being way less thrilling than I was expecting. Again, that is mainly due to the off pacing.

The story would progress and build-up, and then it would suddenly be cut off and the story would go in a different direction. Thus, I had a bit of a hard time keeping up with the story and I also felt like it didn't feel complete. There were holes in the story and the book could have benefited from being a bit longer in order to fill those in.

Another setback for me was the lack of thinking on the part of the characters. Any possible risks were ignored, which is an issue for me because it makes sympathy for the character to go out the window if you knew what was coming for them. Then we have the direction the story went in, which is a whole separate issue for me. It simply didn't work for me and was thrown off by a lack of clarity.


Characters:

Let's talk about our main character, Claire Kovalik. She, in my eyes, was a textbook case of an unreliable narrator, and unreliable narrators are not my cup of tea. She is someone who has deep-set trauma (and is suffering from amnesia and hallucinations to boot) and feels like she has nothing to lose, which is a double whammy. So, not only is she unfit to be in charge of a team, she makes questionable decisions for selfish reasons which were consequences.

As for the rest of the supporting characters - Kane, Voller, Lourdes and Nysus - they felt severely underutilized. I understand that the story focuses on Claire, but the others barely get their own stories to the point where they feel irrelevant to the plot. Not much time was spent setting up characters who become more prevalent further along in the book as well. Claire is the only one with any form of development, and I didn't even like her development.


Concluding Thoughts:

This was a complete miss for me on all fronts. A less than thrilling plot that suffered from pacing issues with characters that were either unlikable or underutilized. Again, while I did end up giving this a generous three stars, there is an emphasis on the generous part. If you are looking for something to scratch that 'mystery thriller on a ship stranded in space', I don't think that this would be it.

Thank you, NetGalley and Tor Nightfire for granting me access to review this.

Claire Kovalik has never been especially ambitious, but she isn't ready for her career in space to be over yet, either. So when she and her crew basically stumble on top of The Aurora, a famous lost luxury liner, Claire knows this is her last chance at a future in space. On board the Aurora, though, it's clear that something terrible happened. There are noises in the dark, strange messages scrawled everywhere, and the bodies... are just wrong. Claire will have the battle of her life on her hands, to hold on to her mind, to know what is real, to survive.

This book was awesome! There are some seriously scary scenes, and the author is a pro at building tension. The whole book reads as very cinematic. I think it would translate well to a film or tv show, and be super creepy!
I love how the supernatural elements are done, but I agree with other reviewers that there may be too many components for one novel. While I understand the dual timelines are needed to provide backstory and context, I think it could have done with cutting at least 50 pages, to keep the suspense razor sharp. Those are minor critiques, though, and I did greatly enjoy the book overall. I think Sci-Fi Horror is a genre with so much potential. I haven't read that many of them, but I will have my eye out for more by S.A. Barnes, for sure. Thank you to Netgalley and Tor Nightfire for the chance to review this advance copy.

Team Leader, Claire Kovalik is feeling sad, mad, & frustrated. Her latest space voyage aboard the LINA, a comweb sniffer is almost at an end. The LINA is being decommissioned because it is old and obsolete. All of her crew have been reassigned except for her. At 33 Claire is considered old and obsolete, too. Their mission is finally complete and they are to rendezvous with the Ginsberg which will take them back to Earth. Just as they are changing course for their rendezvous, Lourdes, her communications officer reports she has picked up a distress signal. As the only ship in this sector, Claire has them change course away from the Ginsberg and out into uncharted space.
It isn’t long before they find the distressed ship. She is the Aurora. A luxury space-liner that left earth over twenty years ago. What is she doing way out here? Surely people on board can’t still be alive. They only carried enough provisions for 18 months. What started out as a rescue has turned into a salvage and the crew is excited about this. The treasures they will find on this ship will make them all be rich. Claire and her pilot, Voller, are the first to board the Aurora. What they see is horrifying. These people did not die of starvation. Many of them died violently, either by their own hand or another’s. There are warnings written in blood on the walls everywhere. It’s a funny thing about greed that it is so easy to ignore the warnings of danger your own mind is screaming at you.
This book was quite an adventure. The pace was quick and I gobbled it up. Many times, I drew parallels with the horror movie, The Alien. I recommend this book to anybody who likes that feeling of apprehension that creeps over you when you are not sure you want to keep your eyes open to read what happens next.
Robyn Heil, Buyer for Brodart Co.

Oh. My. God. Make this book into a film IMMEDIATELY. What an insane rush of horror, sci-fi, space travel, and all levels of craziness that a 20 year old lost luxury cruise spaceship’s reappearance with everyone dead can possibly create. I loved the horrifyingly creepy experience of this whole thing and cannot WAIT for more horror sci-fi from this author. (Also, please please make this a movie-put it up right next to “Sunshine” or “Event Horizon” please!)

I really enjoyed this one, even as someone who isn't the biggest fan of sci-fi. I often feel like sci-fi as a genre goes over my head a lot so I usually don't pick it up, but HORROR sci-fi is a different story for me. The atmosphere of this book was so tense both because of the mystery surrounding the ghost ship as well as the claustrophobia that comes with space travel and I found that the setting and (very gruesome!) descriptions worked really well.

I also was very invested in the characters in a way that I think doesn't happen for me often in horror. I think usually I don't let myself get attached to them, because I know in many cases the majority of them don't make it out of the book alive, but Claire and her crew were really engaging and I found it hard not to be hopeful for them even when I knew there was no chance.

Overall I thought this was a great read!

I don't even know where to start with this review because my mind is still so blown away by this story.

I loved it!
The characters, so beautiful and not perfect but also perfectly perfect. I do wish we got a bit more backstory on some of them but oh well.

The freaking inside of the Aurora and the creepy spine tingling feelings and the descriptions of everything especially that "mobile" scene. Oh my gawd. So creepy and atmospheric and lovely at the same time.

Not a perfect ending but it's a horror sci fi so I mean, it's only meant to be.

I now need a prequel from the aurora passengers perspective k thanks.

Dead Silence is a plot driven, haunting, psychological horror set aboard a deserted space ship. Dead Silence already has some buzzy comparisons going for it: The Shining set in space? Say less.

We follow Claire in two timelines. One in the past where her and her small crew discover an abandoned luxury spaceship reserved for specifically elite, high class riders, and one in the present day where she has been rescued from this space craft as the sole survivor, but what happened??

Two timeline stories are always hit or miss for me. I always find myself preferring one timeline over the other, and this book showed no different. Once the past timeline loses its novelty of impending doom I found myself more interested in the present day timeline. Did Claire fulfill her role as Jack in The Shining or is something more ghostly and supernatural at play? The psychological horror at play in this novel is very interesting and you really are in Claire's head through it all. You start to question everything Claire perceives.

Some of these elements may keep their sparks with individual readers, or they may lose their flare as thee novel progresses. My reading experience tended to lean toward the latter. I was really thrown off by an unexpected romance subplot, but that'll be hit or miss for most horror readers I know.

Thank you to @NetGalley and @TorNightfire for the advanced eGalley in exchange for an honest review. Dead Silence comes out February 8, 2022.

I hate to be what seems like one of the very few people who did not like this book but unfortunately I am. I was so excited for this because horror meets sci-fi sounded so intriguing to me as I’m a huge horror lover. There were so many things going on in this book which instead of making it exciting ended up leaving us with a book that has so many undeveloped ideas that didn’t even make sense half the time because they weren’t explained. Despite everything going on I still found this book to be quite boring because it left me with literally zero emotion and by the time I got to the explanation of what was happening I really just did not care. I really don’t understand how this book relates to the “Titanic meets The Shining.” It was overall a huge disappointment and a miss for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Nightfire for providing me with this review copy.

Strong narrative helps propel the “slower”, more mysterious, portions of the book. Strikes a nice balance between suspense and action. Nice space horror

Evil greedy company vs the workers answering a mysterious SOS call in outer space...did someone say “Alien?” There are some good visuals, but overall Dead Silence is long-winded and derivative.

I loved the Project Paper Doll series, and I was so excited to learn that this was the same author.
Horror in space is one of my favorite themes in sci-fi, and Dead Silence did not disappoint. I read Salvaged by Madeleine Roux earlier this year, and Dead Silence is very similar, although, in my opinion, much better written and definitely scarier. Claire is a bit of an unreliable narrator, what with her seeing ghosts even before her crew boards the Aurora, but I liked her and her backstory a lot. The rest of her crew was great as well, and I think Barnes did a great job of making those characters likable and interesting even though they didn't last very long. I really hope Barnes keeps writing these kinds of books. 4.5/5 stars.

Dead Silence was absolutely incredible. I was worried when I started it that it would be a simple retelling of the Titanic, but it was so much more than that. It was scary, haunting, and kept me at the end of my seat. I can't wait to recommend this book to everyone when it is released - I am already seeing it in most anticipated horror books of 2022!

Overall a great read with great characters. I dont really read a lot of science fiction but I was really impressed with this book!

Compelling space sci-fi . A bit hard to get into at first, but once I did, I was hooked. It was actually quite scary, too.

Sharp, fast-paced writing and a suspensful storyline would make an incredible screeenplay! I read this title in an afternoon and was hooked. There are plenty of creepy and moody moments, along with a strong female protagonist with more flaws and vulnerability than is usually found in the sci fi horror genre.

Ghostship meets Event Horizon meets the Shining, with a dash of the Sixth Sense and a spooky homage to the wreck of the Titanic. There's a lot going on for a popular fiction title, including not-so-subtle pokes at unrestrained coporate greed. Our protagonist, Claire, is haunted by the trauma of her past and the horrific events of the present. She is plagued by terrible visions and gaps in her memory and I was left wondering until the end if she was a reliable narrator. A great page-turner for fans of the genre.

Thanks to NetGalley and Tor Nightfire for the ARC.

This book was so much fun to read! If you love space horror, this is the book for you! It brought back all of the great feelings I have had with Event Horizon, Alien, and the Dead Space universe.
The book is about Claire, the team leader on a space ship working on the communications relays out in distant space. Nearly at the end of the job, she and her team discover the Aurora, a long-lost, luxury ship that had hundreds of people on board when it vanished. The book follows the story of what they found and the corporation who will go to great ends to prevent the truth from being known. The books plot took a turn that I did not like at about the 2/3 mark, but thr great writing and characters carried it through.
S.A. Barnes is an incredibly talented writer, and I did not want to put this book down. I highly recommend it!!

Ever since the launch of the Alien marketing campaign in 1978, sci-fi fans the world over have been familiar with one simple concept: in space, no one can hear you scream. It’s a chilling fact. But with the release of S.A. Barnes’s new novel Dead Silence (out February 8, 2022) readers are about to learn that it’s a lot more complicated than that—and twice as terrifying.

In Dead Silence, Claire Kovalik is a blue collar beacon repair team lead stationed at the outermost reaches of documented space. Orphaned at a young age in a terrible accident, Claire has found a home in space—a home she is about to lose after this final job. The applications to further her career have failed, leaving her with the frightening prospect of being grounded on earth, permanently.

But just when it looks like it’s time to hang up her space suit, Claire and her team pick up a faint distress signal that leads them to an impossible discovery. Listlessly floating deep in unexplored space is the Aurora, a luxury cruise vessel that mysteriously disappeared twenty years ago on its maiden voyage. With a find as rare as this one, Claire could avoid her impending retirement and open her own transport service. But once her crew steps on board the ill-fated ship, they realize something is wrong. Whispers, visions, and thousands of dead bodies threaten to drive them insane before they can claim their find. Can Claire hold onto her sanity long enough to secure her future?

Genre fiction fans can be a tough crowd to please, but a sci-fi/horror novel as fine as Dead Silence is near guaranteed to be a hit. Barnes keeps their writing style simple and approachable, avoiding the purple prose that sometimes creeps into the sub genre. This direct, easy approach allows the content of the story to take the driver’s seat—and what a story it is.

The marketing materials for Dead Silence do a good job of letting readers know what to expect, with comparisons to Paul W. S. Anderson’s late-90s chiller Event Horizon and Kurbick’s watershed adaptation of The Shining. But Barnes’s tale of working class folks trapped in a ghostly ship of horrors stands all on its own. The descriptions alone will stick with readers long after they’ve placed Dead Silence back on the shelf. Dark hallways beckon, an ornate atrium stands empty and destroyed, even Barnes’s depiction of a swimming pool in space takes on a horror that won’t soon be forgotten.

Filled with twists, thrills, and frights, Dead Silence is a masterful new addition to the science fiction and horror realms. As the first few pages slip through their fingers, genre-literate fans may think they know what’s coming—and that’s just when S.A. Barnes wants you to think.

I wasn't super invested in any of the characters but the descriptions of the ship and its demise were richly horrifying and dreadful. A fun, spooky read for anyone with a Titanic obsession at any point in their lives.