DEAD SILENCE by S.A. Barnes – Review

I received this book for free from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

DEAD SILENCE by S.A. Barnes – ReviewDead Silence by S.A. Barnes
Published by NIghtfire on February 8 2022
Genres: Adult, Horror, Science fiction
Pages: 352
Format: ARC
Source: Publisher
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five-stars

The nitty-gritty: Titanic meets The Sixth Sense in this terror-filled mystery set in space.

I had a blast with Dead Silence, undoubtedly one of my most highly anticipated early 2022 releases, and while it didn’t necessarily go where I expected it to, I found it to be surprising and addictive. Dead Silence features an unreliable narrator stuck in an impossible situation, a survival story with ghosts and evil corporations, set in the dangerous depths of space, and if this sounds like your cup of tea, you’ll probably love it too.

The story is narrated by Claire Kovalik, Team Leader of the LINA, a small commweb maintenance sniffer tasked with maintaining deep space beacons. She and her crew of four—Voller, Lourdes, Kane and Nysus—have been out in the black for two years, but their assignment is over and it’s time to go home. Claire isn’t happy, because she knows her future involves nothing more than a boring desk job, and she’s trying to draw out her last moments in space as long as she can.

But just before they’re ready to rendezvous with the ship that will take them home, communications expert Lourdes picks up a faint distress signal. Claire jumps at the chance to spend just a little more time in space and convinces the rest of her crew to investigate. What they discover is shocking: they have found a luxury ship called the Aurora, missing for twenty years with all 650 people aboard presumed dead. The crew knows that they can “claim” the ship for their own and get rich selling off bits and pieces of the now famous tragedy, but Kane in particular is leery about what they might find once they board. But the thought of making enough money to change her future is too tempting for Claire, and so they decide to check it out.

Once aboard the ship, they discover all normal systems to be offline, like the gravity and temperature controls—not surprising after being lost for twenty years. The corridors are dark and eerie, and Claire keeps seeing movement out of the corner of her eye. But even worse, the ship is full of dead bodies, and most appear to have died under strange and unsettling circumstances. As Claire and her crewmates make their way to the bridge—in order to secure the ship’s black box—they begin to sense a threatening presence on board the Aurora, and what began as an exciting opportunity begins to turn deadly.

The story is told in dual timelines. We start out in the present, when Claire has been rescued from the Aurora and is being interrogated by two men. She’s telling them what happened—or at least the parts she remembers—all while trying to convince them that she didn’t kill her crewmates. This is a great set-up, because the reader is immediately thrust into a mystery: what exactly happened on the Aurora? In the second chapter, we go back to the beginning of the LINA’s adventures, finding the Aurora and going aboard, and Claire’s tale unfolds over the course of the first half of the book. But at the midway point, the story shifts from past to present after Claire has finished telling her horrifying tale, and Reed and Max tell her what’s going to happen next. I think some readers will be thrown by this abrupt change—I know I was a for a bit—but I ended up loving the second half, which is full of even more tense action and creeping terror. This was a real page turner for me, and despite the scary premise, I found myself reading late into the night.

There is a lot going on in Dead Silence. In addition to the mysterious deaths on the Aurora and the dangerous situation Claire and the other find themselves in, Barnes also adds a political element in the form of two competing corporations, Verux and CitiFutura. This rivalry has a lot to do with the reasons behind the Aurora’s tragic end, as you find out later in the story, but it also figures into Claire’s life and her uncertain future. Reed and Max, the two rather unpleasant men interrogating her, eventually find out the truth later in the story when they get to see the Aurora first hand.

Claire is a fascinating character, and I sympathized with her completely. Barnes gives her a harrowing backstory that added a nice touch to her “unreliable-ness.” As a child, Claire and her mother were assigned to Ferris Outpost, but a viral outbreak due to corporate negligence killed everyone in the colony, including Claire’s mother, and Claire was the only one to get out alive. She’s clearly still dealing with PTSD and may or may not be mentally unstable, so some of the things she’s experiencing in this story are questionable. Claire can see ghosts (and in fact she claims that her mother’s ghost was responsible for saving her on Ferris Outpost), but she also questions these visions time and time again. Is she going crazy due to the trauma she suffered as a child? Or can she really see ghosts? It doesn’t help that Reed and Max are gaslighting her and insist that she is indeed crazy.

By far my favorite parts of Dead Silence were the ones when Claire and her crew first board the ship and discover the bodies. Barnes’ descriptions are full of eerie imagery, like the frozen swimming pool full of bodies and blood—and yes, there is a swimming pool on this luxury space ship!—and hundreds of bodies floating in the air. In the midst of all these people who have died in what looks like horrible ways, Claire is seeing ghosts everywhere she looks. This combination of corpses and ghosts was chilling, and there’s a claustrophobic feeling as Claire, Kane, Lourdes, Voller and Nysus make their way through the dark corridors, heading further into danger as they go.

The final chapters are off the charts crazy and felt more like an explosive action movie, and yes, you are going to have to suspend your disbelief a bit. But I loved every second of it, especially the epilogue that takes place several years later and nicely resolves Claire’s mental state and her struggles with Verux. If you’re in the mood for a spooky mystery set in the depths of deep space, you’ll definitely want to check this out.

Big thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.

Posted January 31, 2022 by Tammy in 5 stars, Reviews / 29 Comments

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29 responses to “DEAD SILENCE by S.A. Barnes – Review”

    • Tammy

      I have to admit I keep getting this title mixed up with Dead Space, and yes they do have some similarities:-)

      Reply
    • Tammy

      That’s so weird! I went back and checked some other people’s comments and I do see emojis in some of them. I’m not sure what’s going on ‍♀️

      Reply
  5. todd

    This is certainly one I’d be willing to try. I’m a bit nervious that it sometimes felt like a movie as the storyline sounds very similar to several movies I’ve seen and possibly stories I’ve read. But if it’s done well I might still enjoy it.

    Reply
  7. Susy's Cozy World

    Sometimes when a book take us in some unexpected places or surprises us because we weren’t expecting for the story to go in that direction, it can really be an added value!
    And usually spooky and creepy are not my cup of tea, and yet your review made me curious. A lot!!
    I think I would add this one to my TBR for the moment and see how things would go!

    Reply

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