Synopsis
A Best Book of 2022 by the New York Public Library • One of the Best SFF Books of 2022 (Gizmodo) • One of the Best SF Mysteries of 2022 (CrimeReads) • A GoodReads Choice Award finalist for Best Science Fiction!
Titanic meets Event Horizon in this SF horror novel in which a woman and her crew board a decades-lost luxury cruiser and find the wreckage of a nightmare that hasn’t yet ended.
Claire Kovalik is days away from being unemployed—made obsolete—when her beacon repair crew picks up a strange distress signal. With nothing to lose and no desire to return to Earth, Claire and her team decide to investigate.
What they find is shocking: the Aurora, a famous luxury spaceliner that vanished on its maiden tour of the solar system more than twenty years ago. A salvage claim like this could set Claire and her crew up for life. But a quick search of the ship reveals something isn’t right.
Whispers in the dark. Flickers of movement. Messages scrawled in blood. Claire must fight to hold on to her sanity and find out what really happened on the Aurora before she and her crew meet the same ghastly fate.
“Truly un-put-downable in its purest sense.” Chloe Gong, #1 New York Times bestselling author of These Violent Delights
Review
I had been seeing this book all over the place and I just absolutely loved the cover. I was on a book buying ban though (still am) so I waited months of being “good” before finally caving for it.
I have to be candid with this one. Reading this hit me at the perfect time in many ways. My fiancée at the time was traveling for work at a new job. I went to bed at midnight and she woke me up at 4:30AM to bring her to the airport. I thought I’d get to go back to sleep but then the puppy was whining so I didn’t. I then preceded to do 7 hours of house and yard work, so exhaustion doesn’t really begin to explain it. I did the majority of my reading after that and the following day. I think because of the prior lack of sleep I worked myself up into a migraine for the next day. Didn’t stop me though, I just continued reading with it.
The first 160ish pages nothing happens. I kept thinking like why is this so boring? Why can’t I seem to sit still and get through it? Then I realized that I had been kind of sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for something to happen since page one. So it wasn’t poor writing, it was purposeful. It was building suspense. That cabin-fever feeling, that paranoia. What I noticed around this point was that I was actually feeling genuine paranoia while reading. I’ve only ever felt this way while reading a single time before. It was while reading Dracula, a Signet classic version with font so small I legitimately wished for a magnifying glass. Same thing though, I was sick with a migraine while reading it, and I felt heightened paranoia while reading it the entire time. Now, much older, I was feeling the same again with Dead Silence. Just a very continuous, creeping suspicion that someone was watching. I felt like I kept seeing things out of the corner of my eye or if I’d turn around too quickly I’d catch a glimpse of something. I mean, the kind of have-to-force-yourself-to-go-to-the-basement-laundry-room creepy.
This may not work for everyone, this might not hit at all for some. For me though, this was just a perfect storm of things. The over-tiredness, the migraine, the being alone. It all just worked really well for me. I think this’ll be my new creepy suggestion from now on for people.
With all that being said, there are still some things I didn’t particularly like. The story is first person and the main character says a great amount of things over and over and over. This certainly adds to the cabin fever-y, “is anything real” side of the story, but I do firmly believe that some of it was a little too repetitive. The story also has a ‘now’ and ‘then’ where the character is being interviewed about what happened (kind of Annihilation style) and they just straight up talk about deaths before they happen. That’s kind of overdone for me and it didn’t work as well here as it was intended. I also didn’t particularly like any of the characters. That doesn’t make the story less spooky or horrifying, it just would have hit home more if I cared about them each personally.
The second half of the book breaks away from the ultimate horror side and becomes more of an action-y climax. This includes an explanation of what’s causing the events on the ship. For me, a nice and neat ending, with explanation included, kind of kills the overall feel of the novel. I don’t mind when horror is ambiguous, I kind of prefer it. With that being said, the second half of the novel is certainly still quite enjoyable!
I’m also in the midst of reading Ghost Station as well!
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