Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes is a horror novel that takes place in a science fiction setting. This novel reminded heavily of the science fiction film starring Lawerence Fishburn and Sam Neil called Event Horizon. Both stories have space ghost, a character just wanting to see a loved one who was separated, and eye gouging. This novel had all that I could want, but it took me a really long time to connect with these characters. I started really enjoying myself 50% in. The pace drastically picks up and the novel gets good. There’s a couple of good twists that I did not see coming. The ending is full of action and some clever twists. The beginning really made me work it, I don’t think it was ever in the do not finish category, but it was so hard to connect to any of the side characters, and Claire the main character took a while to connect as well. The highlight of this book is the madness and the horror that comes with it, it made me look around my dark room once or twice and felt my chest pounding.

The Plot Summary: Claire hears and sees ghost based on a tragedy that killed both her parents when she was younger. She knows she a risk and isolates her self on the farthest outpost that is monitored in space. She’s been alone for a while but now her job of monitoring is getting replaced with bots. She and her crew of five start heading back on their last day and hear a distress call. The agree to go off course to find it. What they find is the find of the century a luxury starship the Aurora. The Ship has been missing for over 20 years, the crew debates about calling it in but since they’re all jobless after this why not take from it themselves before over scavengers can. When they see the ship they were prepared to see dead bodies but they see bodies not dead to exposer but dead to being brutally murdered. They scavenge but get the idea to use their ships navigation to bring it in so they will get everything, but that means they will have to stay on the ship with all the dead bodies. Everything goes fine until the crew starts to see things that aren’t their and commit self harm. Is the treasure worth it if they don’t have their sanity and life?

What I Liked: The climax is spectacular and the saving grace to this novel it was written very well. I liked the twist with the ship and what was going on. I loved the horror aspect to the book, there’s some scary gory imagery that will haunt you. In the end I ended up liking the romance angle, I didn’t buy it at first but in the end it sold me. I liked the aspect of a person who see’s ghost everyday talking and teaching others about how to deal with seeing ghost. I like how the bad guy was portrayed.

What I Disliked: The beginning of this book is so disjointed and took me so long to get into this book. The characters I only liked to characters and just barely I wanted more backstory, ad the book does a horrible job at making them different personalities at the being. The book also does a lot of telling but not showing at the beginning. It reminded be too much of Event Horizon I would start thinking of scenes from that movie when I was reading this book at some scenes that were close.

Recommendation: If you’ve never watched the movie Event Horizon you will like this book more. Please watch that movie after it s good and you will see similarities. I will barely recommend Dead Silence the ending is a killer if you can get to it. The first 50% was hard but the last leads to it being unputdownable. I wanted to like this book more than I did. I rated Dead Silence by S. A. Barnes 3 out of 5 stars. The ending almost boosted it to 4 stars it was close.