Synopsis
A crew must try to survive on an ancient, abandoned planet in the latest space horror novel from S.A. Barnes, acclaimed author of Dead Silence.
An abandoned plant. A hidden past. A deadly danger.
Psychologist Dr. Ophelia Bray has dedicated her life to the study and prevention of ERS—the most famous case of which resulted in the brutal murders of twenty-nine people. It’s personal to her, and when she’s assigned to a small exploration crew who recently suffered the tragic death of a colleague, she wants to help. But as they begin to establish residency on an abandoned planet, it becomes clear that crew is hiding something.
And Ophelia’s crewmates are far more interested in investigating the eerie, ancient planet and unraveling the mystery behind the previous colonizers’ hasty departure than opening up to her.
That is, until their pilot is discovered gruesomely murdered. Is this Ophelia’s worst nightmare starting—a wave of violence and mental deterioration from ERS? Or is it something even more sinister?
Terrified that history will repeat itself, Ophelia and the crew must work together to figure out what’s happening. But trust is hard to come by…and the crew isn’t the only one keeping secrets.
Review
I got this one from NetGalley and was so excited as I was a big fan of Dead Silence (check out that review here). I unfortunately started reading it at a rough time for me, so it took me so long to get through that I actually switched to the audio. Zura Johnson did a good job, and there were several accents, which always impresses me.
This novel mixes a lot of what you’ve already seen out of other sci-fi horrors. Not that I’m in any way the expert, having only seen/watched some of them (Event Horizon, Alien, Life+). Not necessarily that something needs to be original for me to enjoy it, however, if I’m being honest, there was unfortunately nothing exciting about this. This one followed along the same path as Dead Silence, where there is an incredible amount of set up, but it did not work on me twice. Where the first hit me at the right time, and the long opening added to the cabin-fever feel of the narration, this one didn’t work.
The main character has a haunted, hidden past. And although it is continuously mentioned as a major secret, when it is eventually revealed, it does virtually nothing to the plot or climax. While it was supposed to show the lead overcoming expectations, it just read as flat to me. The stakes feel too low with them being on another planet—one which does not have a breathable atmosphere.
There is one point where I felt the novel was shifting toward a big change. They wanted to leave but were stuck in the station during a snow storm. It was still quite late for a climax to start, but I thought it might have been shifting towards a more classic, claustrophobic-isolation horror (just in space). Instead it just kind of continued off the rails. Really wanted to love this one, but it fumbled most of the landing for me.
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