If you are after a blood and thunder Scott Sigler style of science-fiction horror novel, this might not be the book for you, as it is rather slow, patiently setting the scene and relying upon atmosphere rather than jump scares or bloodletting. Max informs Claire that Verux is sending himself, Reed, and Claire to investigate the Aurora and retrieve the bodies. The novel follows Claire, a team leader who worked aboard a Verux repair ship servicing communication beacons in the outermost regions of explored space alongside her crewmates Voller, Kane, Lourdes, and Nysus.

While on a corporate space job, our group of five get an emergency signal and decide to investigate. We’ve been living on other planets and moons for a hundred years and visiting space for even longer than that, and still, a tiny piece of metal with misaligned grooves can fuck everything up. and what harm could there be in boarding a ship that, despite being top of the line in every way, abruptly and inexplicably went dark and has been floating through places unknown full of whatever's left of whatever fate its passengers met, undisturbed and unprovoked for decades? It’s always so satisfying when a book you’ve been highly anticipating lives up to your expectations.

Barnes does a good job of setting up our story, with our protagonist Claire at the end of her run as a Team Lead for a corporate space mission, who is worried about what she does next, as she has no money and no prospects due to a checkered past. Barnes ably conjures the kind of haunting setting and atmosphere required for this Event Horizon-esque novel, providing an effective sense of immediacy to Claire's frequently shifting and at times tenuous grip on reality.

My choice out here among the stars, the distant glimmering planets, and the absolute silence of space. While those similarities are there, and they’re obvious from the start, Dead Silence is its own unique monster full of great writing and well-developed characters. His work has been nominated to the Bram Stoker and Locus Awards and won the Wonderland Book Award for Best Novel in 2019. All her life Violet has grappled with her ability to sense the echoes of those who have been murdered and the matching imprint that clings to their killers.His reviews appear regularly in places like NPR, Publishers Weekly, the San Francisco Chronicle, Criminal Element, Mystery Tribune, Vol. Resolutely, I turn my gaze away from the hallucination and attempt to refocus my attention on the living visitors across the scarred and battered plastic table from me. I’ve read a few good horror fantasies last year, but this is the first horror sci-fi book I’ve read in quite some time. To wrap this review up on a high note though, I really enjoyed Claire’s character development and journey. This novel felt like it was just a mash-up of other horror movies/novels hoping to combine them to deliver a winner and it was nowhere near that in any way, shape, or form.

This is one of those time-warp books—the ones where you look away from the clock, then look back and it’s suddenly way past your bedtime.

Claire further tells them that her crew had begun to experience these same effects, leading to Voller killing himself. After all, being able to make a salvage claim on such a luxurious and famous ship could literally change all of their lives for the better. While narrating the events to the investigators it becomes clear that Claire can see ghosts, something she had always been in denial about but finally admits to herself is genuine. The reader genuinely walks every step with Claire and her crew as they explore the giant tomb, uncovering the bodies of long-since-dead famous starlets of two decades earlier, whilst trying to fathom the reason for the disaster, and slowly developing a nigglingly bad feeling that things are not right. For me, a little horror goes a long way (can’t have too much nightmare fuel all at once), but this was definitely a good choice for one my rare ventures into the genre.

And, the best thing about the characterization was how well the author handled the main character, Claire. However, there is also a dash of humor and a blossoming love, both of which work to balance out the constant sense of dread and impending doom as well as the presence of bloody ghosts, including some from each crew member’s own past.Doing the whole “Now” and “Then” angle can work if executed well but here, it gives things away too soon and you end up mulling through this novel just to fill in the pieces with little to no suspense along the way. Out in space there aren't many places to get help and when a distress signal is received, it's something that has to be investigated. For all ebook purchases, you will be prompted to create an account or login with your existing HarperCollins username and password. Torn between her desire to lead a normal life and the pressure from the Center to continue her work tracking down killers, Violet’s world starts to unravel…and some of her most carefully guarded secrets are exposed.