The plot and the mystery of this story and backstory had me more intrigued than any horror aspect within it. The creepy atmosphere, however, was excellent. Just imagining being on a ship essentially alone with a bunch of bodies that are cryogenically preserved is creepy enough. The eventual monster of the space horror would likely be more terrifying in a movie than on the pages of a book, but the psychological suspense aspect is definitely done well.

Barnes is able to build up an interesting political history to the world that I really enjoyed and think would be great if this was developed and explored in a sci-fi space opera with horror elements.

Halley is in hiding, with bruised ribs and a black eye and barely enough credits for a shuttle trip off planet, when she answers a shady ad for an even shadier job: all she has to do is check on the cryogenic tanks on the defunct museum ship, Elysian Fields, and push a mysterious but very important button every three hours. After a few months she'll have enough saved up for a fresh start.

Spending her days performing this routine in a sleep-deprived haze, she begins seeing things that can't possibly be true, prompting her to take a closer look at the station and its silent inhabitants.

I love a horror thriller set in space. The frozen isolation and unnatural physics of a space station, combined with the knowledge that a single wrong step could mean being sucked out into the void, gets right under my skin. Add an unreliable narrator on the lam and a malfunctioning station, complete with flickering lights and scraping that sounds a lot like dragging footsteps? Count me in.

The writing is great and Halley's motivations are believable. The middle loses momentum just a touch, but it gains it back in the final third. This was creepy and action-packed and gory, full of tension from the beginning, and I can totally picture it as a movie with a pounding soundtrack and some gnarly practical effects.

I love the way S.A. Barnes writes sci-fi horror! They are creepy and atmospheric. Full of suspenseful moments and tension that continually ramps up until we get to this epic ending, I COULD NOT put this down and read it in one sitting.

On a ship full of the bodies of those cryogenically frozen, all Halley needs to do is make some rounds to ensure nothing is wrong and press a button every three hours. Doesn't sound too hard. Right?
Well, as soon as she arrives, Halley has a weird feeling about the ship. Little things start to seem strange, and with the constant sleep interruptions, her mind starts playing tricks. Halley isn't sure what's real and what's not. And when a strange voice starts calling her name, what else can she do but investigate?

I love how the horrors slowly revealed themselves, and how the story unfolded. I can't wait to see what S.A. Barnes is going to come out with next!!

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>𝐂𝐎𝐋𝐃 𝐄𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐓𝐘 is a sci-fi/space horror about a girl seeking refuge on a rundown ship housing cryogenically frozen bodies. Glitchy holograms, haunting isolation & a dark take on self-preservation. I really enjoyed the isolative, leering horror, the antagonist was creative and terrifying to conceptualize, and I even enjoyed the little hint of romance! The AI-horror component was current with the times, even the ship and idea of frozen bodies was horrific to imagine in the future with technology and financial privilege. It dragged a tiny bit in the beginning, but otherwise was very creepy and captivating! (3.75★)
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A sci-fi horror written by a librarian? LET"s GOOO. After finishing this one I bought the author's haunted house (space book) I really like their prose and the whole thing felt weirdly intimate. I don't typically go in for Sci-Fi horror because I feel a little intimidated by how "smart" it can expect the reader to be. But this prose was so approachable and the science was never too hard to follow. Really great. Can't wait to explore more from the author.

This is probably my favorite S.A. Barnes novel yet. It’s definitely scarier than her others, and the tension builds in a way that really worked for me. The story follows Halley, who’s on the run and decides to lay low on a creepy old cryo barge floating in space. Naturally, that turns out to be a terrible idea.

The ship feels wrong from the start, and the creeping dread that builds as Halley starts hearing things and seeing movement in the shadows is just so well done. I also really liked how the action picked up later on and how it all came together at the end. If you’ve read Barnes before, this one feels like her stepping things up in the best way.

“𝘐𝘵’𝘴 𝘧𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨, 𝘐 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸… 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘱 𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘢𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘢𝘳, 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘢𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘢𝘳 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘥𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘴.”

Thank you Tor Nightfire and Macmillan Audio for the advanced readers copies via NetGalley. This one is out now! I listened to S. A. Barnes previous novel, Ghost Station, last spring and while I avoid the horror genre it is understandable to a degree that her books are given that label; there are moments of intense creepiness, sci-fi gore, and psychological suspense.

Like the former I opted for the audio copy and flew through it rather quickly. Once again we find a strong-willed woman trying to hide from one scandal only to find herself wrapped in another messy situation. It never comes across as trite, rather I found myself intrigued to know more about our main character and see how things would unfold. There are questions of reality, sanity, identity, technology, morality, and mortality.

Despite its label it isn’t horror like you would assume when you hear that term as much as it is suspenseful, intense, with some wicked eerie and disturbing moments, though I felt some of the “horror” descriptions at times were a bit excessive and it came across as trying a bit too hard. Overall I liked it fine but I enjoyed Ghost Station a lot more. I was kept engaged and interested throughout and enjoyed the narrator (different than the one for Ghost Station but both are really good). It did take a turn I wasn’t expecting and gets a bit gruesome but other than that it was okay. Content includes some profanity, sci-fi violence, and a few grotesque descriptions of bodies. I have yet to read her first, Dead Silence, so I might give that one a go at some point. For any sci-fi loving fans out there I’d suggest picking this author up if you haven’t yet.

Like the previous two books, I enjoyed Cold Eternity! We discover Halley's background very slowly through the book, and although I understand the choice, it made it a little difficult for me to get into the story. Compared to her other two books, this one has a limited cast and features a little more fantasy/supernatural/etc. elements which are not super well explained. What I enjoyed from Dead Silence was that everything kinda had an explanation but if you liked the ending of Ghost Station more than Dead Silence, you might enjoy this one as well. Overall, another fascinating space horror but I have to admit I prefer the larger cast of characters in previous books.

SA Barnes doubles down on her claim to be queen of ‘Space Horror’

Since S.A. Barnes published Dead Silence back in 2022 she has fast become one of the leading lights in the sub-genre of ‘Space Horror’, with Cold Eternity being her third standalone offering, hot on the heels of Ghost Station (2024). Although Barnes might be relatively new to the horror world, she has written as Stacey Kade since 2010, with a wide range of adult and YA titles, often mixing up the genres.

I reviewed Dead Silence back in 2022 which was a solid 4/5* but I found her latest offering Cold Eternity to be too similar, with the reader heading to yet another almost empty space station, where things get strange pretty quickly. Many of the descriptions and atmosphere from her debut are shipped wholesale into this third novel making things too samey to be truly effective. This is not to say the setting is a let-down, far from it, the descriptions of the crumbling spaceship and its even stranger inhabitants are one of the strongest aspects of the story.

Cold Eternity opens by introducing a young woman who is on the run (from what and who is revealed slowly) and needing a safe place to hide until she can save up enough space travel credits to start a new life with another identity. She answers an anonymous post for a job as a caretaker on a deserted ship named the Elysian Fields, which she coincidently visited as a tourist when a child. This ship houses the cryogenically frozen bodies of the world’s richest and most famous people from a century earlier, using a technology which has since been abandoned with the bodies forever frozen, but slowly decaying. She readily accepts the incredibly low paid job, eager to finally be alone and safe for a period of time whilst she figures out what to do next.

Almost all of Cold Eternity is set on the Elysian Fields spaceship, which back-in-the-day was owned by an eccentric billionaire Zale Winfeld who saw the then cutting edge cryogenics technology as a potential way of cheating death. A century later the experiment is seen as a failure and main character Halley has the role of basic tech maintenance, with all the decaying once beautiful exhibits for company. With glitchy barely functioning AI maintaining the stars of yesterday, many remain uncannily realistic and are more than enough to keep Halley on edge.

Halley’s remaining peace of mind quickly evaporates when she begins to see strange visions and hear unsettling noises. She puts it down to sleep deprivation and paranoia over her personal situation until all those weird things start to add up to something significantly darker. Ultimately, Cold Eternity could have done with more characters than Halley, who did not have much depth, and her obviously dodgy employer who pops up here and there, side-batting all her concerns.

Once the paranoia sets in Cold Eternity is a one trick pony with it being relatively easy to see which direction the story is heading into, as the clues are relatively easily telegraphed. Barnes does a fine job of making the ship feel like a crypt, with dodgy AIs, unreliable holograms and the unanswered questions surrounding what is lurking in the darkness. The slow reveal of how Halley has found herself in this situation is cleverly handled and I enjoyed how Barnes deftly painted a bigger picture of how space travel was a pricy business and very easy to get stuck on some remote planet will little opportunity of raising the cash to escape.

It is very tough to write a book with so few characters and Cold Eternity might have benefited with a larger crew rather than just one person. Halley is continually sleep deprived due to having to press safety buttons every three hours and Barnes does a neat job of dropping the reader into the head of a character who is buckling under the pressure. And hold onto your hat for a wild ending, which abandons the subtleties of what preceded it.

3.5/5

Cold Eternity is another space horror novel and after reading the previous two books this author has written, I really wasn't sure what to expect as I had mixed feelings about both those books. And yet again, the same thing has happened with this one as I enjoyed the setting a lot, liked the creepy feeling that was being set up, then felt the let down at the conclusion of the book. Personally, it just didn't quite deliver the goods.

I didn't mind the main character, Halley, who is on the run for something in her political past. We learn quite early that Halley is not her real name and that quite a few people are after her; either they want her dead or they want the information she carries. The desperation she felt as she hunted for a job to protect herself was well-written, and I liked the way she still tried to protect herself from predators despite her qualms. When she arrived at the job, it was eerie as anything, but she managed to keep her cool and do her job. Personally, I think anyone in her position would ignore the clues that were abundant around her because she was so desperate to earn money and get away. When you are desperate, you will do anything, and ignore anything, to get what you need to escape. I didn't actually mind that aspect of her personality as I understood her desperation. And it's not like she didn't see what was in front of her, she just chose to ignore what was there because it helped her to survive and cope.

The plot itself was actually quite interesting the first half of the book, and I found it eerie and downright creepy. I couldn't figure out why Halley just accepted meeting the mechanic the way she did, but I guess there are some things you are just supposed to ignore as you read. *Sarcasm The ship itself it pretty much a graveyard, with bodies frozen in a cryogenic state aboard. And it was downright creepy. And to be fair, I love eerie ghost ships and stories that revolve around this premise so the creepiness was right up my alley. And you would think the second half of the book would up the creepiness factor, but yet again, the author ruined it by going the paranormal route instead of the horror route. Up to this point, the horror element was actually quite good and I was thinking the author had upped the game and would bypass the previous books, then bam, the paranormal stuff, which totally ruined the horror element for me.

Cold Eternity was actually quite good until about two-thirds of the way into the book, with good atmospheric horror elements and a creepiness that can only come when aboard an empty ship full of cryogenic people that no one knows what to do with. The character development was fine, and although Halley did some things that made me roll my eyes at times, it was more out of desperation than because her character was silly as she was desperate to get away from people who were hunting her. However, I wasn't keen on the last third of the book as an element was introduced that spoiled the overall creepy effect and left me feeling a bit disappointed in the ending. That being said, it was still an engaging read and worth your while if you like sci-fi horror.

S.A. Barnes certainly seems to solidify her reputation with "Cold Eternity," plunging the reader right back into the kind of chilling, isolated deep-space scenario she navigates so well. I was immediately drawn into the protagonist Halley's desperate situation – a fugitive hiding out as a caretaker on a decaying cryo-ship, essentially a museum housing hundreds of frozen bodies awaiting some future promise of immortality. Barnes excels at creating that palpable sense of isolation and mounting dread; the aging, possibly haunted, ship itself almost feels like a character, vast and unsettling.

I found the way the tension ratchets up, fueled by strange occurrences, potential sabotage or sinister motives from the other caretaker, and Halley's own eroding sense of reality under pressure, was incredibly effective. The novel skillfully blends its intriguing sci-fi premise (the ethics and creepiness of the cryo-ship) with visceral horror elements – reviewers mention body horror and a generally gorier feel than some of her previous work, which I felt served the story's intensity.

The central mystery of what exactly is happening aboard the Elysian Fields kept me thoroughly hooked. While it employs some familiar, effective tropes of the 'haunted spaceship' subgenre, the specific execution here felt engaging and atmospheric. Perhaps, for my taste, the final revelations unfolded just a touch quickly in the last chapters, but the journey getting there was undeniably tense and compelling.

Overall, "Cold Eternity" struck me as a highly entertaining and well-crafted sci-fi horror novel. It delivers perfectly on suspense, unsettling atmosphere, and scares, all anchored by a compelling protagonist fighting for survival in an incredibly creepy setting. For readers like myself who appreciate atmospheric, character-driven space horror, this is a really satisfying and spooky read.

I'm a new fan of S. A. Barnes and they have me wanting more. It's space, it's scary, and I NEED TO KNOW what happens next. Will definitely recommend to library patrons & staff.

S.A. Barnes has terrified me once again. This book is so creepy, timely, and hard to put down. I really love how this book blends a tense horror read with a believable sci-fi story. (Almost too believable in an eerie way!) Readers of Blake Crouch and Darcy Coates will enjoy this book. It has jump scares, an exploration of politics, power, and space, and a really satisfying plot!

4.5/5 stars
This book had me paranoid and checking over my shoulders in the best of ways! I already knew it was going to creep me out but I wasn't prepared for how terrifying I would find the monster, especially in a ship full of cryogenically frozen people. Every few seconds I was paranoid because I was convinced the people were waking up in a zombie state until I realized it was a separate monster. I loved and enjoyed this book and I'm so happy I got to read it.

I have really enjoyed the novels by S.A. Barnes . They aren’t quite 5-star reads for me, but they are definitely enjoyable and deliver on both the sci-fi and horror aspects! Plus, the mystery in this book was intriguing and I enjoyed trying to unravel it! And two pages into this book and I was already loving the premise of it as well! Halley has had it rough and accepts a shady job as a caretaker/security on this sort-of abandoned spaceship. And I say sort of because this ship holds a bunch of cryogenically frozen bodies.

So the job shouldn’t be that hard, right?

WRONG. In fact, it is super creepy and there are weird noises on the ship that have nothing to do with the repairs the creepy and mysterious (read: suspicious) guy who hired her is doing. One thing I love about S.A. Barnes's books is the creepy factor. She has that down perfectly! I mean, just imagine being on an isolated ship with a bunch of bodies in cryosleep and no one to talk to. And on top of that, you start to feel like there’s something lurking on the ship, possibly hunting you...

There is just something about that premise that I loved so much! Probably the fact that it was creepy... and set in space. Lol. Space horror is my jam these days, and this book definitely satisfied my craving for the subgenre! I don’t want to say too much because spoilers, but I loved the creepy descriptions of... things and situations. Lol. They were SO good! It was horrific! And I loved it!! 😆 I also liked the mystery surrounding the ship, its owner, and the AI. There were some things I guessed ahead of time and some things I didn’t, but I really enjoyed the story either way. It was CRAZY!

One thing I didn’t care about too much was her political past, and, honestly, that’s just a me thing. I’ve had too much politics in real life and I am tired. Lol. However, I did appreciate the character development Halley went through. And I actually really liked Halley as a main character. I liked that she was smart because, let’s face it, a lot of protagonists in anything horror-related are not 😂

But I enjoyed following her on her journey as she tried to get her life together and figure out what the hell was going on with this creepy job on this creepy ship that she desperately took.

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"There is no freedom, no escape. Not from Elysian Fields."
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I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for a review.

Another awesome book by S.A. Barnes. I don't think this one is as creepy or nail-biting as the first one, but it was still really good. There were plot points I could see coming a mile away. I may be in the minority here, but I really liked the ending. It was fitting and made sense.

The concept of this book is really cool and creepy. A floating crypt of half dead/cryogenically frozen people sets the stage for what could be a super atmospheric and haunting read.

For some reason the execution wasn't there for me. The majority of the book is spent inside the FMCs head - which is fine, but it was very slow. And then the "reveal" / explanation as to what was going on just fell flat for me and didn't make a lot of sense. It seems there are a lot of politico-social themes at play. I'm sure that will work really well for some people.

I think I am constantly chasing the high of Dead Silence and not finding it.

I just need my space horror to have a little more umph.

I absolutely adored Dead Silence and greatly enjoyed Ghost Station, but Cold Eternity just didn’t do it for me. I’m not the hugest fan of horror that burns slower in the first place, but this one burned very slow, in my opinion, and the payoff at the end just didn’t compensate enough for all of that waiting and anticipating.

The book also felt a little too long for the plot and so the pacing felt sketchy in places, with some scenes seeming repetitive in a way that didn’t feel like a stylistic choice or one congruent to the way the story was being told. (What I am trying to get across are that there are scenes that are indeed repetitive in nature because that’s part of the plot and the story, but there are also scenes that feel just simply repetitive in the way filler scenes feel repetitive.)

Barnes’ worldbuilding continues to astound, though, with a spooky, hulking ship that feels not unlike an allegorical symbol of Dante’s nine circles, leaving our protagonist, Halley, to ponder the sins of the world alone in a state of limbo.



I was provided a copy of this title by the author and publisher via Netgalley. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. All reviews rated three stars or under will not appear in my social media. Thank you.

Cold Eternity is the latest release from S.A. Barnes, author of Dead Silence and Ghost Station. I always look forward to Barnes new books and this one did not disappoint. This is another Space Horror novel and features a compelling protagonist, Halley, who after taking a remote assignment on an abandoned space barge, discovers there's more danger in the job than she could've ever anticipated.

In the very beginning, this was giving me light-Artemis vibes. I think mostly because Halley, the way we meet her and the things she was thinking about at that time, were reminiscent of Jazz, the MC in Artemis. You can tell that Halley is girl with a complicated past, who is trying her best to stay clear of it. I liked how the author filled that in for us over time, and I truly became attached to Halley and her well-being over the course of the story.

She takes the job on Elysian Fields, a giant space barge housing a now defunct cryo program, thinking the remoteness and isolation will help her to avoid the things she's trying to avoid. Unfortunately, life on the floating crypt isn't as harmless as she thought it would be. Constant disturbing noises, and mysterious moving figures, haunt Halley's days and nights. She finds it impossible to sleep, impossible to rest her nerve-rattled brain.

Karl, the only other human worker aboard, is just as puzzling as everything else about the Elysian Fields. Halley's thoughts race and ramble as she tries to make sense of her new surroundings. It's during this time that the Reader may begin to question how well they can rely on their narrator. Learning about the Elysium Fields, its past, Halley's connection to it and its present iteration was so compelling. Barnes does the horrors of future tech so well, and this story is absolutely terrifying if you think about it for too long...

S.A. Barnes has really made a name for herself in the SF-Horror space. She does such an incredible job creating an ominous atmosphere in each one of her stories, as well as well-developed main characters.

I feel like some Readers may avoid, or be intimidated by SciFi stories, as they feel like they may be too science-heavy, or too high-concept, for them to understand, or be pulled in by. And while I can understand that inclination with many SF-books, I would urge you, if this is you, to give S.A. Barnes's work a try. She makes her stories accessible to all types of Readers, whether you are a big-SF fan or not, I think you'll easily be pulled in by her work and find it enjoyable.

This story, in particular, is well within our range of current understanding as tech rapidly progresses around us every day. I could absolutely picture a world where a situation like this becomes a reality. Stories of futuristic tech always get under my skin. I just find it genuinely frightening to think about. All the ways such developments could go wildly wrong. Reading about it, in fun works of fiction like this, provide me with a safe place to explore such concepts, and honestly, it does help lessen some anxiety around these topics for me.

That may sound silly, but it is one of the reasons I so enjoy this type of story, and S.A. Barnes is my absolute go-to author for gripping, realistic, futuristic SF-Horror. This had a lot of unsettling moments, with a great creepy atmosphere throughout. Towards the end it did have some moments where it started to feel a little muddled for me, but overall, it was a great reading experience.

Thank you so much to the publisher, Tor Nightfire and Macmillan Audio, for providing me with copies to read and review. I'll be anticipating whatever Barnes releases next!!!

☄️COLD ETERNITY☄️ by @authorstaceykade is a claustrophobic encounter on a defunct spacefaring ship that will have you gagging with terror. Thank you to the author, @netgalley and the publishers, @tornightfire and @macmillanaudio for the ARCs and the finished copy.

🛸🛸🛸

Hailey is escaping her past and takes a seemingly cush if boring job on board the Elysian Fields, a former hospital ship shut down to the public for decades. When things start to go bump in the night and she feels as though she is being watched, she starts to have second thoughts but can't very well quit with nowhere else to turn. Unable to help her curiosity, she explores parts of the ship not meant for her and delves into the history of the mysterious family who owned the ship which leads her to uncover some seriously weird shit! And then she finds out her employer knows she is not who she says she is...

While I was not as enamored with the character of Hailey as I was with Ophelia of GHOST STATION, l think I liked the horror reveal/creature feature aspect of this one even more which was SUPER CREEPY. It is unexpected and absolutely crazy cray and I loved it. If you like locked room horror mysteries, this one just happens to be set on a docked spaceship. Space is scary and I am here for all the thrills!

This book comes out TOMORROW and you should pick it up for some deep space thrills and chills!