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3.82 AVERAGE
3.82 AVERAGE
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Barnes has created an interesting combination of sci-fi and horror. It is 2159 and Claire captains a four person salvage ship. They hear a distress call from deep space and discover the Aurora. The Aurora was a luxury ship that went missing on her maiden voyage. Claire knew it had been too long for survivors but wanted to claim the ship for salvage rights. Once they board the Aurora they realize that things are very very wrong. As the team finds bodies in the wrong places, messages in blood and strange voices, they debate if they are sure they want to stay. Dead Silence is not a true horror book, those looking for one could be disappointed. The romance was distracting and poorly done.
Impeccable psychological gory thriller horror. Very much plot driven so if you need to connect to a character, this might not be for you. The characters are barely fleshed out and mostly unlikable imo. First person narrator is sometimes unreliable and that just adds to the eeriness. I had to turn on the light while reading at night. The ending wasn't as satisfying as I thought it would be in the beginning but it still made for a good story in the end. I loved the rollercoaster of this book.
Although the promotional copy for Dead Silence advertises S.A. Barnes's story as "Titanic meets The Shining," it feels more like a severely watered-down derivative of Aliens and Event Horizon with an unwanted dash of romance tacked on for good measure.
While repairing a communication satellites in deep space, Claire Kovalik picks up a distress signal from the lost luxury cruise ship, the Aurora. Immediately sensing fame and fortune over such a discovery, they chart a course to make their salvage and find way more than they expected. The Aurora, it turns out, is a literal ghost ship and the vacuum-frozen corpses floating throughout the Titanic-inspired vessel show signs of extreme violence. For the ghosts aboard, as well as for the readers, Claire's team represents fresh victims. Yay!
Told in alternating "Then" and "Now" chapters, Barnes builds up an ominous background forRipley's, I mean, Claire's ordeal aboard the Aurora as she's interrogated by a pair of company-men from Weyland-Yutani Verux, the corporation that owns the lost ship and wants it back. To be fair, Claire really isn't all that comparable to Ripley, as she lacks the latter's brains, brawn, and is hardly as compelling a heroine. Claire, you see, has amnesia and doesn't recall how she escaped from the haunted vessel or how all of her crew died. But she is certain she can't let this greedy, evil corporation get their hands on it!
Barnes does have some neat ideas and scenes over the course of Dead Silence, even if they don't all play out to their fullest potential and the ending we're provided with is inexplicably, unsatisfyingly mundane (and, to its further detriment, largely unexplored). When we first meet Claire in the opening "Now" chapter, we get the impression she's an unreliable narrator thanks to the combination of psychiatric drugs being pumped into her and the hallucinations of her dead crew coming and going and drilling holes in their ghostly noggins. It's fun stuff, but Barnes forgoes giving her central character, or the story Claire relates to us and Verux's investigators, any sort of ambiguity. For a book that is ostensibly about madness, insanity, and psychosis, it's sadly straight-forward, which makes the head-games rather unfulfilling and ultimately as passive as can be.
Better was Barnes's depiction of Claire as a trauma survivor with a decidedly suicidal bent, as well as the commentary on corporate greed via Verux. But, again, this latter point isn't really a fresh or compelling take on bad businesses compared to the Alien flicks that clearly inspired it, and which Barnes liberally borrows from at regular turns throughout the story's plot. About the only element she hasn't taken from those movies is Jones the cat, who is sadly missing here. Well, Jones and the xenomorphs, since Barnes is cobbling Event Horizon's ghost ship conceit atop Ripley's story to make it her own.
Sadly, Dead Silence failed to live up to the expectations generated by Tor Nightfire's marketing team, thanks to its lack of originality and any genuine scares, its Scooby-Doo finale, sluggish pacing, and a heavy focus on Claire and Kane's will-they-or-won't-they romance. And, why yes, Kane was a character in the first Alien movie! This book also violates my general rule of thumb for stories thatrip off are "inspired by" other better known properties to either be smarter or more entertaining (if not both!) than the material they're cribbing from. Ultimately, you can skip Dead Silence and watch Aliens and Event Horizon instead. Those movies are much better than this book, and you can thank me later.
While repairing a communication satellites in deep space, Claire Kovalik picks up a distress signal from the lost luxury cruise ship, the Aurora. Immediately sensing fame and fortune over such a discovery, they chart a course to make their salvage and find way more than they expected. The Aurora, it turns out, is a literal ghost ship and the vacuum-frozen corpses floating throughout the Titanic-inspired vessel show signs of extreme violence. For the ghosts aboard, as well as for the readers, Claire's team represents fresh victims. Yay!
Told in alternating "Then" and "Now" chapters, Barnes builds up an ominous background for
Barnes does have some neat ideas and scenes over the course of Dead Silence, even if they don't all play out to their fullest potential and the ending we're provided with is inexplicably, unsatisfyingly mundane (and, to its further detriment, largely unexplored). When we first meet Claire in the opening "Now" chapter, we get the impression she's an unreliable narrator thanks to the combination of psychiatric drugs being pumped into her and the hallucinations of her dead crew coming and going and drilling holes in their ghostly noggins. It's fun stuff, but Barnes forgoes giving her central character, or the story Claire relates to us and Verux's investigators, any sort of ambiguity. For a book that is ostensibly about madness, insanity, and psychosis, it's sadly straight-forward, which makes the head-games rather unfulfilling and ultimately as passive as can be.
Better was Barnes's depiction of Claire as a trauma survivor with a decidedly suicidal bent, as well as the commentary on corporate greed via Verux. But, again, this latter point isn't really a fresh or compelling take on bad businesses compared to the Alien flicks that clearly inspired it, and which Barnes liberally borrows from at regular turns throughout the story's plot. About the only element she hasn't taken from those movies is Jones the cat, who is sadly missing here. Well, Jones and the xenomorphs, since Barnes is cobbling Event Horizon's ghost ship conceit atop Ripley's story to make it her own.
Sadly, Dead Silence failed to live up to the expectations generated by Tor Nightfire's marketing team, thanks to its lack of originality and any genuine scares, its Scooby-Doo finale, sluggish pacing, and a heavy focus on Claire and Kane's will-they-or-won't-they romance. And, why yes, Kane was a character in the first Alien movie! This book also violates my general rule of thumb for stories that
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
4.5 stars. I really enjoyed this one! Very eerie and fast paced. Off to find more space horror.
adventurous
dark
funny
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This was… ok. Maybe not being a fan of the narrator didn’t help with liking the book a whole lot, but I also felt like SA Barnes kept ending chapters on a cliffhanger only to quickly resolve the issue in the first paragraph of the following chapter which was annoying. Plus, I felt that she was too obvious about the “plot twist” by drawing direct attention to specific lines that were meant to hint at it, instead of allowing the reader to pick up on them. (spoilers below):
One specific moment is when Claire is getting ready to go back on to the ship with the soldiers and Max tells the soldiers “Thank you for your service” and instead of letting the moment pass Claire has to directly acknowledge that its something you only say towards someone about to die. It’s one of those moments where I thought ‘How can she not see that they’re obviously going to destroy the Aurora’?
So.. yea. An ok audiobook to zone out to while I’m at work. But not one of my favorites.
So.. yea. An ok audiobook to zone out to while I’m at work. But not one of my favorites.
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Stopped at 22%. Pretty boring and I couldn’t get into the voice actor. Maybe it gets scary down the line. I’m not going to wait and find out.