I just cannot get into this. There were a couple of creepy moments but not enough to keep me going. If you’re into slowplaced sci-fi horror this one could be for you.

The premise of this story really captured my interest: a deep space crew discovers a supposedly lost spaceship and are tormented by strange, disturbing visions. Are they being haunted by the ship’s former crew? I love science-fiction and horror as well as stories that bridge genres. Unfortunately I felt the story failed to develop in a satisfying way. There are too many cliche elements: amnesia that only affects plot-important memories, instalove romance, and a monologuing, mustache-twirling villain. I love the ideas behind this book, but the execution and characters felt ultimately shallow.

Thank you for the opportunity to review this book! My day was made when I received this. Space horror? SIGN ME UP. I enjoyed this book. I thought it was a quick and fun read.

DEAD SILENCE is so incredibly engrossing that I both listened to the audio, and read the ebook. Now I'm eagerly anticipating Ghost Station. DEAD SILENCE is true SciFi Horror, in every sense. Set far enough into the future that humans have expanded into the Solar System, other-planet colonies are a reality, corporations rule, and Earth's resources are scarce and Earth 🌎 is overcrowded.
The female Protagonist is both wonderfully strong, emotionally wrecked, occasionally mentally unstable, product of a seriously traumatic childhood, an orphan....and incredibly devoted to her crew of "commweb" Space workers, for whom she is Team Leader.

Read this for the absorbing prose, for the fascinating female Protagonist, for the author's deep and effective treatment of Trauma, mental instability, Paranormal sensory experiences, corporate evil, gentle at-a-distance soft romance.

Be aware there are also gore, some on-the-spot violence, lots of previously-occurring violence including suicide, homicide, assault. Also family dysfunction and dysfunctional individuals, mental trauma and mental illness.

I sometimes find it hard to connect with science fiction-horror in literature. It’s a genre that lives and dies by the imagery of cinema.

S.A. Barnes clearly understands this. ‘Dead Silence’ understands the genre and its tropes well enough to subvert and strengthen them. It’s a scary novel: the atmosphere of a haunted house massacre with the fiddily half-science that the genre demands beneath it. Brilliant and terrifying.

"Dead Silence" is sci-fi horror. In a moment in the future, our heroine Claire and her tiny spaceship crew come across a ship that had long disappeared from history--a space luxury liner akin to Titanic. When the ship is examined, however, it is clear that all is not well. In addition, Claire, coming from a background with significant trauma issues, is obviously even more danger. What happened to the ship? What will happen to Claire? These are the questions "Dead Silence" seeks to answer.

What's good: I'm here for a space riff on Titanic, I fully admit that. Wandering the decks of a long-forgotten ship sounds awesome (and horrifying) to me. And there is a LOT of creepiness in this particular version.

What's iffier: I figured out some key issues in the book right from the start, so as a result, some of the big mysteries didn't feel so mysterious to me.

With gratitude to Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to read an ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

I originally grabbed this mostly to see if my wife would want to read it; I find the broad idea fascinating (abandoned ship floating in space, the mystery of what happened), but the horror vibes here really got to me, and especially so Claire's mental state for most of the book. I like the crew enough -- not Voller, of course, but the others -- that I got quite anxious about what was going to happen to them, and I was also having stress nightmares at the time, so it was all a bit awful. A combination of "not quite for me" and "not the right time".

That said, once I got past a certain point and it stopped being "awful stuff is happening without explanation" and started being "action is being taken", I got back into it and finished it more or less in one go. The explanation behind the mystery made sense of things beautifully, and the body count wasn't as bad as I expected, so that was all fascinating.

It was pretty interesting that Claire's ability to see dead people seemed to not just be hallucinations, though; she was genuinely perceiving something about them, or there were genuinely ghosts around them. That was never quite explained and dug into, and I almost preferred it that way.

It's a genuinely tense, claustrophobic SF/horror story -- just a little much for me personally.

I really enjoyed Dead Silence and could see this playing out on screen (perhaps a series?). I personally prefer shorter chapters, so it sometimes seemed a bit of a slower read, but it was still a very interesting plot and I look forward to other books with a similar feel. It was intriguing and suspenseful.

I don't recognize that I love Sci-fi/ horror mashups until I'm knee deep in one. S.A. Barnes has a great book on her hands with Dead Silence, the narrative bouncing back a forth timelines is very interesting, and helps build a sence of unease throughout. I dig this.

DEAD SILENCE by S.A. Barnes read like a mix between a Star Trek and Dr. Who episode I watched many, many, moons ago—Love It!

The novel opens in the year 2149, wherein the Team Leader of commweb sniffer L1N4 (LINA), Claire Kovalik—after being rescued by Raleigh, a search and rescue team—is being interviewed by an investigator of Verux’s QA Department.

The accusation made against her—that of murdering her entire crew for financial gain after their discovery, two months prior, of the Aurora—a luxury space liner that went missing twenty years.

Recommend!

Thank you, NetGalley and Tor Nightfire Publishing, for providing me with an eBook of DEAD SILENCE at the request of an honest review.

I had no idea what to expect from Dead Silence and S.A. Barnes kept predictions to a minimum through most of the book. This was a twisty sci-fi horror that crossed genre lines and raised more questions as the story progressed. I loved the way tension and terror was built before reaching a significant, unexpected climax. Very climactic and filled with tension. S.A. Barnes has a wonderful way of combining past with present to tell a complete story.

I really enjoyed this book and it’s ending. My only criticisms are that it was a bit obvious what was going on, but the story was still interesting enough that that didn’t bother me too much. Also, I think it was a little bit too long, but I’m impatient sometimes!

A great read by this author. I definitely recommend checking this one out!
Thank you NetGalley for providing a copy of this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Someone online had called this Titanic, with ghosts, in space and I immediately knew I wanted to read it and boy, that promise did NOT disappoint! I absolutely adored this and have been telling everyone they need to snag a copy! Can’t wait to see what Barnes comes up with next!

Really enjoyable book that blended scifi, horror, and mystery in a tightly plotted book. At times I got aggravated with the lead, but overall really liked reading it!

Are you a fan of space books? Are you also a fan of the movie Ghost Ship? LOOK NO FURTHER! This book is for you! And also, this book was 100% for me. I am a huge space horror fan, and it’s sooo hard to find them. Or good ones, at least.

This was one of my most anticipated books of 2022, so I was super jazzed when I got it as an eARC in late 2020 from NetGalley. And then I just…never read it. Until 6 months after it was released, oops. I suck. I think I was nervous to read it because I was SO excited for it and my expectations were sky high. I needn’t have worried!

This felt sooo much like Ghost Ship, but set in space. Which is AWESOME. That is one of my favorite horror movies of all time, and this book had the same vibe! Yet it was still entirely unique. I love that we only get super creepy snippets here and there, it made for a very suspenseful and atmospheric read! The pacing was perfect. When things start happening it’s hard not to be disturbed. There were a few scenes that made my skin crawl! This book had me at the edge of my seat and I was dying to know what happened.

I didn’t really care about the characters at all, but the chilling happenings paired with the creepy air of mystery made up for that. And that ending wasn’t what I expected at all!

I've read several accounts of the Titanic's demise... the blurb of Dead Silence brought me to request it. And I got pretty far in before I stopped reading. It was the horror elements that I didn't like. I tried it and got to about 50%.

Quick review for a quick read. Oh my gosh, I think I've found one of my favorite reads of the year. "Dead Silence" by S.A. Barnes really hit the spot for me in terms of having a blend of sci-fi survival horror that I was looking for this year. The story revolves around Claire, a woman tasked with leading a crew investigating the abandoned ship Aurora after detecting a distress signal from it. It had long been missing and the crew thinks they may uncover some rather unique treasures from the Aurora. That's where it starts, at first, but then Claire and her crew start uncovering some mysterious horrors that have occurred within the ship - a combination of footage and a grisly body count that leave behind so many questions.

The narrative, at first, trades between past and present. Claire is interrogated as part of an investigation of events. She doesn't remember everything that happened, but she's presumably the sole survivor of her crew after serving as its leader, though questioned for her leadership abilities even before the fallout venture on the Aurora. Claire tries to put the pieces together, navigating her own history of trauma with the more recent events. I thought the way this book handled the psychological element and fear was very well done. I felt bad for Claire while also questioning what actually happened in the lead up to the present. But what surprised me even more was the fact that this group was willing to put her back into the fray to direct events in order to discover more of the truth of what happened on the Aurora...and the eventual fall out and discoveries that unravel from there. I was on the edge of my seat wondering who was going to make it out alive, especially with the fear of not knowing whether this foe was something left to the imagination or a real, omnipresent threat.

Pacing was wonderful, the development of the characters was realistic, the big bad made sense and I found myself enjoying the ride all the way up to and through the ending. Definitely one of my favorite reads of the genre this year and I look forward to reading more from the author.

Overall score: 4/5 stars.

Note: I received this as an ARC from NetGalley from the publisher, but I also purchased the audiobook copy from Audible.

Titanic meets The Shining? Yes please. Could not put this down. No cliches that you generally find in horror or space tropes. Hands down a favorite of 2022.

Dead Silence is a gripping psychological thriller in a slightly dystopic sci-fi setting. My rating: 5 of 5 stars.

Sci-fi fans will enjoy the very plausible future of Barnes's imagination, where early space travel is controlled by rival corporations and the rich and famous pay to board a cruise ship around space.

But this is no ordinary sci-fi novel. Everything that happens from the moment Claire and her crew discover the lost cruise ship is creepy, uneasy, and disturbing.

Claire's character was also very relatable. Her history of trauma causes her to question her own perceptions of reality, ability to lead, and protect those she cares about.