Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes

Published: February 8, 2022

Publisher: Tor Nightfire

Series: Standalone

Genre: Horror, Science Fiction

Pages: 343 (Hardcover)

My Rating: 4.0/5.0

Synopsis:
Titanic meets The Shining in S.A. Barnes’ Dead Silence, a SF horror novel in which a woman and her crew board a decades-lost luxury cruiser and find the wreckage of a nightmare that hasn’t yet ended.

A GHOST SHIP.
A SALVAGE CREW.
UNSPEAKABLE HORRORS.

Claire Kovalik is days away from being unemployed—made obsolete—when her beacon repair crew picks up a strange distress signal. With nothing to lose and no desire to return to Earth, Claire and her team decide to investigate.

What they find at the other end of the signal is a shock: the Aurora, a famous luxury space-liner that vanished on its maiden tour of the solar system more than twenty years ago. A salvage claim like this could set Claire and her crew up for life. But a quick trip through the Aurora reveals something isn’t right.

Whispers in the dark. Flickers of movement. Words scrawled in blood. Claire must fight to hold onto her sanity and find out what really happened on the Aurora, before she and her crew meet the same ghastly fate.

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I find myself increasingly drawn to horror books, particularly those with mysteries set in space or on abandoned space ships. They’re really like a locked room mystery,  but the sheer emptiness surrounding a ship adrift among the stars adds an extra layer of disturbing vibes.

So, imagine you’re kicking about in a rustbucket little ship on the edge of “safe” space when suddenly a distress signal comes through and it turns out to be a ship that’s been lost for two decades. You and your repair crew decide to go check it out in hopes that there’s some money in it since you’re also about to get laid off or reassigned. Things seem off from the outside of the ship, but once you board it’s really, really bad. Dead bodies frozen in what used to be the pool, people plugging their ears and intentionally blinding themselves, acts of unspeakable violence… Yep, that’s exactly what happens to Claire Kovalik and her crew right before they finish their last beacon repair mission. 

This story is the perfect combination of an unreliable narrator and creeping dread. While there’s some gore and the evidence of past violence (and so, so many dead bodies) it’s not a slaughter-fest. The horror is primarily psychological and it definitely creeped me out! I’m honestly a bit of a wimp when it comes to scary stuff, but this wasn’t too bad and didn’t give me any lasting trauma (lol!). To be honest, the corporation Claire works for is pretty scary in its own right – they have their own psych ward, military force, and generally shady business practices.