Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes

Released February 1st, 2022

Dead Silence is a wonderful example of Sci-Fi Horror. The story starts off with Claire in the “Tower”, a place where undesirables and people who are unstable are sent after missions with Verux, a large corporation that reminds me of Wayland Yutani. Here Claire starts to tell investigators what happened to her crew on the edge of space when they located a ship that had been missing for over 20 years. Throughout the narrative, Claire shares details of her time on LINA (a ship owned by Verux that she worked as Team Leader on) and further back to when she was a child who survived a horrible accident. I wasn’t sure I liked the time jumps back and forth at the beginning of the novel, however, by the third chapter or so I was sold. I loved the way Barnes released information, building up tension and building the universe of the book. This book is classified as Horror and, honestly, if it had been written any other way I don’t think it would have worked as horror. The slow release of information and clouding of reality and hallucination was what made this work as horror. The characters aren’t developed very much beyond Claire. This is understandable as the book is from Claire’s point of view. However, I would have liked to get to see how other members of the LINA crew think, as they are only viewed through Claire who spends the majority of the book being an unreliable narrator. Overall I think Barnes nailed Sci-Fi Horror, characterization (of Claire at least), developed the world in an understandable way, and I hope other authors look to this book as a way of writing Sci-Fi Horror and unreliable narrators.
Check this book out if you are a fan of Aliens, Ghost Ship, or suspenseful Sci-Fi.