gilda_elise

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.

I couldn’t out this book down. Is it science fiction or horror? Maybe a bit of both.

I didn’t think I’d care for it, being written in the first person, but it fit perfectly. Claire has lived with tragedy most of her life, but that tragedy stands her in good stead as it gives her the abilities she’ll need in order to survive.

But it isn’t just Claire who makes this a compelling story. There’s Kane, the engineer. Solid and dependable, Claire finds herself leaning on him more and more. Lourdes, just out of training and new to space travel. Voller, the obnoxious pilot, and Nysus, their link to the Forum. I came to care for them, though some more than others.

But each will have to confront the horror they face, and with any luck find their way home.