geofrog 's review for:

Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes

3.0

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I was drawn to this book because the elevator pitch for this book (Titanic meets The Shining) reminded me of one of my favorite science-fiction horror movies: Event Horizon. Content warning for body horror, suicide and forced institutionalization. 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 loved the dynamic between Claire and the rest of the salvage crew. The world building is subtle and effective. The eerie and spooky elements were amazing. The concept of a haunted spaceship and how Barnes described those scenes during the first half of the novel were very well done. Things became super tense after the team boarded the Aurora and I was glued to my book because of the way the characters started unraveling and how quickly that happened to some of them. Some of the ghost scenes were so unsettling and I really loved how they were used throughout the novel to move things along. The writing was also pretty easy to get into and follow along with. The atmosphere during the scenes on the Aurora were so eerie and very well done. I liked how the flashbacks and the present day scenes feel like two different movies, a horror movie and a sequel, back to back. While I did love the concept and premise of this book, it didn’t satisfy me in the same way that Event Horizon did. I do feel like the author didn’t take the concept far enough considering how interesting it could have been. I liked the premise, but by the time I had reached the second half of the story, I had begun to lose interest. While I liked the idea of Claire returning to the haunted ship with a second crew, everything that happened afterward felt like a repeat and rehash of the first half of the book. I did notice that the storytelling structure of this book closely resembled the horror movies The Descent and The Descent 2, which I liked, I just wish it had been executed in a different way. The ending didn’t impact me the way it should have, even if I liked the explanation and conclusion on paper. Despite not liking this book as much as I should have, I still enjoyed my time with it and highly recommend it for fans of Event Horizon and science-fiction horror.