The third work of space horror by S A Barnes, Cold Eternity finds 'Halley,' a young idealist in disgrace for sticking to her morals fighting sleep deprivation on a giant space barge full of cryogenically frozen bodies in the hopes of earning enough money to start a new life.

Like the prior to books Dead Silence and Ghost Stations day jobs in space are lonely and psychologically taxing. The space ship Elysian Fields has been cruising the space lanes for decades, the brain child of the rich tech genius Zale Winfeld. He feared death and used his wealth to fund the refurbishment of a hospital ship to create a cryo based platform for the wealthy to be suspended, so when they woke they could be cured. To keep funding coming in, the ship became a tourist attraction where visitors could visit rooms of the notable and rich and talk with Winfeld's children through AI holograms.

Hard times have arrived for the Elysian Fields, it is forever on the verge of failure and Karl, its caretaker needs another set of hands to make sure none of the guests accommodations fail and that every three hours a button is pushed to send a signal to the board of directors.

Without any other options, Halley comes aboard already beaten down and struggling mentally, and is plunged into the lonely corridors with only frozen bodies and AI projections for company. At first thinking only the sleep deprivation is getting to her, Halley begins to fear its not just her mind playing tricks on her, but that there is something lurking inside the walls of the ship, something far older than should have survived.

Like their other books S A Barnes Cold Eternity has a slow dreadful crawl of the uncanny before a grand action packed conclusion. Halley grates for much of the first third of the book with their woe is me down and out narrative, but redeems themself before the end.

Recommended for readers of science fiction horror, coming of age redemption tales or a satisfactory story that ties up all its tangents.

Thanks to Tor Nightfire for gifting me an ARC!

S. A. Barnes can do no wrong in my mind... I have loved all of her books, and will buy whatever sci-fi she puts on shelves. This book had a little bit of everything I love: things going wrong in space, "abandoned" stations, people in hiding, creatures/aliens, cults(???), and a little homage to Five Nights at Freddy's/Chuck E. Cheese. (It's creepy, it's always been creepy, and I'm glad more horror about animatronics are coming out...or in this case, holographs!) This felt so tense at times, I had to take breaks. While I did guess the twist ahead of time, it still felt so creepy learning it along the way. Bravo! Already ready for the next adventure...

I have been a fan of SA Barnes from the moment I got my preorder for Dead Silence in my hands and read it in two sittings.. While it is hard to compete with such a striking debut, Barnes is in top form with Cold Eternity. This title is action packed, fast paced, and skews gorier than her other two titles. Cold Eternity is an interstellar Gothic horror romp that gives a touch of haunted house, dose of body horror, and centuries old mystery.

Our protagonist is fleeing her past and hoping that isolation on a ship that is the embodiment of an ill faded, attempt and immortality. What could go wrong? Oh yeah, did I mention that our protagonist is seeing strange things on the security cameras that may or may not be real? This title immediately became my second favorite SA Barnes. Truly unique from her other two books as she explored new territory in the sci-fi horror genre.

Cold Eternity is an exciting space horror novel from S.A. Barnes. I suggest checking out her previous sci-fi books as well. Loved the mystery aspect about what was really going on in the ship as opposed to a straight up monster attack story. I don't want to give away spoilers, so I'll leave it at that.

I'm a library associate and received an advance copy from #NetGalley.

One of the standout aspects of "Cold Eternity" is its expertly crafted atmosphere. Barnes' vivid descriptions of the isolated and frozen landscape are chillingly evocative, making it easy to become fully immersed in the world of the story. The pacing is deliberate and measured, adding to the overall sense of tension and unease.

Atmospheric, creepy, eerie, chilling, and horrific! S.A. Barnes is queen of space-fantasy-spaceship books! I can always count on her to bring the thrills, the chills, and to provide the hairs standing up on the back of my neck feeling that I love. This book is oozing with unease and dread. Cold Eternity gave me the heebie jeebies. Can you imagine being on a spaceship, cut off from others, having to hit a button every three hours, and hearing strange small noises? S.A. Barnes brilliantly nailed the eeriness and loneliness of space, coupled with sleep deprivation, tension, and dread.

Halley has accepted a job on the Elysian Fields, a spaceship carrying the cryogenically frozen bodies of Earth's wealthiest and elite citizens. There she will do rounds and push a button every 3 hours in exchange for room and board and a small salary. She is happy to have the job as she is running from a political scandal.

Things take a turn when she thinks she saw something. But she is sleep deprived, and who hasn't seen something out of the corner of their eye to only have it be something else. Karl, the mechanic and man who hired her, says it was nothing, just a computer glitch...

This book played out like a movie in my mind. I loved the atmosphere, the trapped feeling, the unease, and the dread. I also loved the creepiness of Halley being on board a ship full of cryogenically frozen bodies. Creepy! The eerie vibe mixed with the mounting dread and tension had me feeling tense and on the edge of my seat. I had no idea where this book was heading or what was going to happen as Halley walked around making her rounds.

This book is a little bit of a slow burn but I did not mind it one bit as I knew that Barnes was building tension and dread while enabling readers to get to know more about Halley and the Elysian Fields ship. This book becomes more and more terrifying as the book progresses.

If you have not read a book by S.A. Barnes before this is a great book to start with. My favorite book of hers is Dead Silence.

Chilling well thought out, horrific, and atmospheric!

This was SUCH a wild ride! I loved the concept of living forever and how that intertwined with an alien. The kids having a continued 'conscious' even though their bodies have been dead for YEARS was such a unique twist. Everything about this book was so interesting and insane, and I loved every moment of it!

So many levels of horror for this one. Awesome.
The main character is a young woman with her own baggage and righteous values. She needs to hide but picks the worst job possible. She has to activate a button every 3 hours nonstop stop, which leaves her sleep deprived and susceptible to all sorts of mental disturbings, but what she is seeing and experiencing is far from being in her head. There are many layers of tension and story: the people in cryo, her past, her relationship with her narcissistic parents, her need to survive, the creepy AI and her need to inderstand what is really happening in that "museum" unveiling a terrible secret.
The book kept me on edge until the end with vivid horrifying imagery of a terrible thing that is living in the same ship as her. 

It's also one that can be reread, once we know what she is facing the thrill of her survival can be experienced more than once (not like some thrillers we can only experience once).


Thank you netgalley and pub for approving this one on my birthday. Best gift ever.

such a good book!!!! It is so creepy and scary . the horror is felt while reading, it is scary to be so alone like the main character, and it actually horrifying that something like this could actually happen in real life i the semi-near future. It is so crazy


Thank you to NetGalley, to the author, and to the publisher for this complementary ARC in exchange for my honest review!!!

I liked the storyline and found some moments to be truly horrifying but I couldn't stand the main character. When I found out she was supposed to be 26 I was shocked because in my head she was a much younger character. This one was a miss for me.

I fell in love with S.A. Barnes thanks to her debut novel and her second novel, my love grew. Where Dead Silence was weak, Ghost Station was strong and yet somehow Cold Eternity takes the worse of both to create a whole novel. This would've worked better simply as a novella focused in the present because what more could atmospheric readers ask for when it comes to creepy space cemetery?

Yet the book dwells too much on the past to the point, I found myself at the halfway mark realizing, I do not care how it all comes together and I did not care.

Barnes appears to be in the habit of writing the same novel over and over again, and look, that works for me but at least figure out your strengths. The flashbacks rarely are the strengths. It added some exciting depth and mystery to Ghost Station, but here, it was an annoyance. A break in the atmospheric horror that I crave for Barnes.

The main character is the same as her other two books yet somehow even less flavorless. I could not tell you a thing about the characters in this one despite wanting to hold on tight and live in the creepy world.

My hope is to read more exciting novels by Barnes in the future but this is not it. Even while sitting and reading it at my job that revolves around working with astrophysicists, I didn't mention it to them and I've mentioned a lot of bad science books to them. There just wasn't a lot here to engage with beyond being like "Hey, cemetery in space? Creepy, right?" Yeah, creepy or so I hoped.

I felt the same way about COLD ETERNITY as I did Barnes' previous two novels: super scared, really worried for the characters, and ultimately, underwhelmed. This one had some scenes that genuinely unnerved me (in the best way) but I almost stopped reading because of how little action was going on at the beginning. The ending wraps up a little too neatly and conveniently for me, also. A major plot point of the novel was the main character's relationship to her parents and politics; I felt like both of these seemed out of place and distracted from the much stronger horror elements.

Title: Cold Eternity (9781250884954)
Genre: Space Horror 👻
Author: S.A. Barnes
Publisher: Tor Nightfire
Anticipated Pub Date: April 8, 2025
Steve’s Rating: 4.5 ⭐ out of 5 ⭐


I am so glad Tor Nightfire (apparently) made a three-book deal with S.A. Barnes, a fellow educator-author who’s become one of my favorite writers working today. Her latest, Cold Eternity, takes what worked really well with Dead Silence (2022) and Ghost Station (2024) and absolutely rips (that’s a good thing) a new story with new characters, all of which build on those successes.


I loved that those earlier stories offered characters’ choices that made sense given who their actions showed them to be. I shivered at the sense of growing dread Barnes built through increasing and eventually explosive bouts of tension finessed into the plots of those books, and I felt compelled, as I wrote in my review of Ghost Station, to keep reading until I was through the whole story.


At the start of Barnes’ latest, our protagonist Halley is on the run from the consequences of well-intentioned but naive choices made from a position of privilege, and she’s slumming it, looking for under-the-table work that’ll keep her fed without letting folks know who she is. Halley takes on a spaceship caretaker’s role on a massive, supposedly dead ship… tasked with making what amount to janitorial rounds and pressing a check-in button every three hours, our main character is reduced as the story proceeds and she realizes she’s not alone. What ensues is more than a little creepy, even for a seasoned horror reader.


Barnes’ narrative voice is strongest when our character is alone, facing insurmountable odds, and gathering from her core what she needs to survive. The settings are again standouts in this novel, as they were in Barnes’ first two. The political intrigue at times feels a bit forced, but this is a slight knock against an otherwise stellar (no pun this time) work of great skill and artistry.


I recommend you read this book. If you’re not sure about space horror, give it a whirl. If you already know S.A. Barnes’ work, you didn’t need to read this review because you already knew you wanted more from this author. It’s coming, April 2025, from Tor Nightfire.

Another slam dunk in the space horror genre from SA Barnes. Halley is on the run from her parents and former employer so she takes a job on Elysian Fields a space barge which is the perfect place to lay low being a floating crypt. Her boss who can never seem to be found on board keeps her mainly alone. She begins hearing and seeing things that cannot possibly be and finding talisman around her room. Is she going insane from the isolation or is something way more sinister at hand in this ship. Wonderfully told it’s terrifying and pulse pounding at every turn. Alien meets AI meets the Shining I cannot wait for the next one. Big thanks to Tor Nightfire for the arc in exchange for a review. I loved every weird moment. 5⭐️

Holy creepy vibes, my book peeps!! 🙌

Imagine yourself alone (well, essentially) on a spaceship, level upon level filled with cryogenically frozen people and a theater housing AI holograms!! Oh, and let’s not forget that you’re also stuck with something else that lurks in the dark and is very hungry… 😳🫣

Heebie jeebies galore with this one!! Just another reason why S.A. Barnes is an auto-buy author for me!! Highly recommend!! 👏

Thank you to NetGalley, Tor Nightfire, and S.A. Barnes for the opportunity to read the eARC in exchange for my honest review!! ❤️

One thing about me, if SA Barnes writes a space horror? I’m gonna read it. There’s something about Barnes’ writing that is so engrossing. I always know when I read one of her books that it’s going to be an atmospheric slow burn horror that just encompasses that feeling of dread.

Cold Eternity by S. A. Barnes is the kind of sci-fi horror that I have come to expect from this author, both hauntingly creepy at times and addicting to read.

I will say I found the tone of Cold Eternity quite different from the authors previous books. Although clearly science fiction as far as it taking place in a significantly futuristic world, there was less of the space-y, space travel, space ships feel to this book compared to the others - not to say it was nonexistent, it just wasn't as present feeling and the setting almost felt as if it could have been anywhere at times, not necessarily a spaceship as it was. It had less of the horror of potential alien influence and more of a vibe of something horrifying occurring in a science fiction setting for a majority of the book, until much closer to the end when things began to grow more apparent. This isn't to say it wasn't fantastic in its own way, just a note that it was a very different vibe from previous books; which of course isn't necessarily a negative. It was very much good in its own right.

The first half of the book seemed to have almost more of a psychological horror aspect to it. As Halley is unable to trust her own eyes and experiences as she is gaslit at every turn when she things she sees or experiences something. As a result much of the book is spent with her questioning if something was really going on, and then investigating further to see if she truly is losing her mind, or something more sinister is occurring on the ship she has accepted a job on. All the while, she has her own past which is threatening to haunt her and cause her issues which adds to this vibe and leaves much room for paranoia and uncertainty.

It isn't until the last part of the book that the overwhelming sense of horror hits and it ends up being very much worth the wait and had me invested in the book all over again. This was, as always with this author, a book that I flew through and did not want to stop once I started which is a testament to how incredible the author is at writing this genre of book. For all that it's just for one book, and a few hundred pages at that, it's difficult not to become invested in Halley's story and survival which makes it even more of a phenomenal read. As more information on Halley becomes available this feeling just increases and I loved the aspects of her present that tied to her past and how certain things about the ship she is on are relevant to her past experiences (without giving anything away).

Suffice it to say I loved this book and now find myself with the struggle of waiting for the next fantastic sci-fi horror book that S. A. Barnes comes out with. This author has definitely become an auto-read for me and I find myself left with the struggle of waiting for the next release because I am honestly obsessed with every book that comes out.

So you're hiding from your old boss, some thugs, and, of course, your parents, on a floating cemetery ship filled with rich corpsicles who thought cryogenics would eventually allow them to be cured. You're alone. There are weird noises. You have to keep a schedule that only allows 3 hours of sleep at a time. You're getting paid peanuts, your boss is into some sketchy business, and all you have are bad choices.

Now imagine that there's something impossible skittering and creeping its way around the ship. Your boss is gaslighting you. And a hologram in the shut-down theater somehow knows your *real name*.

Another brilliant spooky space novel by S. A. Barnes! Riffs on Family dysfunction, political corruption, bitter disappointment with yourself, and *oh hell no, what was THAT?* in the emptiness of space. :happy shivers:

This one was closer to 3.5 Stars for me. I loved her other two Space Horror books, but this one fell a little short.

Cold Eternity follows Halley, an ex-political worker who was involved in a scandal. It starts off a little Han Solo finding smuggler jobs. Halley finds a job looking after famous, rich cryogenically frozen bodies on a planet/ship that is pretty destitute. Maybe from lack of sleep, or maybe she is actually seeing it, but she swears she sees a body on the cameras.

Halley is not a great main character. She's just a rich girl who had everything handed to her and then tries too hard to be a hero. There were definitely a lot of references to the United States and the way it will probably end up, which was terrifying. This was a fun, well-written read. Perfect for those that like A.I. and space.
Without giving too much away, the plot did not go the way I thought it would, and the actual reasoning was kind of lame. There were just a few "sub-genres" that did not need to be included when it comes to sci-fi/space horror. I will still eagerly read S.A. Barnes next novel with hungry eyes.

ARC provided by NetGalley for an Honest Review

Slow build space horror that will have you begging for solid ground. Follows MC Halley as she takes a sketchy job in order to disappear after befriending the wrong people. The job in question is on a derelict ship known to be floating the solar system carrying the frozen remains of countless people. Her role is to keep an eye on things but from her first day there nothing is as it seems. While I still believe the authors first book was the best this was still a thrilling and creepy read. Matters are only worsened by the fact that Halley is trying to stay incognito and even if she could call for help who would come?