Reviews with content warning for Child death - Dead Silence

Reviews tagging 'Child death'

Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes

30 reviews

sarah984's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.5

The idea of this book was good - sort of a Titanic meets Event Horizon thing where the main characters find a ghost ship that messes with their perceptions - but the execution did not work for me. The MC's specific non ghost ship related mental health problems were all over the place, but not in a way that was interesting or compelling. The dual timeline thing that only happens for like half the book did not work. The pacing was so slow until about the 70% mark. Most of the actually interesting things happen off screen. The thing that is causing the problem is immediately obvious but no one figures it out. The characters are very vague stereotypes and the romance is deeply stupid. For some reason the same things that were just shown are reiterated over and over like you might not notice (like the character will see a gold faucet and be like "wow! Ostentatious displays of wealth bad!" every single time). I did like the way they solved the problem at the end though.

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gracklewarp's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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marareading's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Terrifying, suspenseful and full of surprises. I loved this because it not only had everything it promised, but it also gave me more! I was expecting a salvage crew and a scary mission, but this went way beyond expectations. Highly recommend if you have a hard time always knowing endings, and anticipating the next plot line.

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keenanmaree's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-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

4.75

This book is truly scary (ghosts IN SPACE?!?) and I was so invested in the characters and figuring out what was going on. Such a fun ride!

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callikat's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark fast-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

4.75

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mar's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

space ghosts huh

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connorjdaley's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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 me.

I have to be candid with this one. Reading this hit me at the perfect time in many ways. My fiancé Priscilla 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? Is it just written poorly? 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. Priscilla and I haven’t really been apart at all in the last two+ years due to Covid. 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!

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bluejayreads's review against another edition

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dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

It’s a rare horror book that can start the story two months after the protagonist gets rescued, say in the first few paragraphs that the protagonist survives and everyone else dies, and still be interesting. And yet Dead Silence manages it.

I am slowly realizing that I don’t actually hate horror. I especially love the horror of big, dark, long-abandoned spaces, and the Aurora is that combined with “something horrible happened here and it could still get us.” Since it’s a spaceship, you also have the cosmic horror of the cold void of outer space, which doesn’t hate you because that would imply you were big enough to notice but will still kill you quickly and painfully just by its nature.

It’s intense, emotional, and terrifying. Claire is wrestling with an ugly combination of shame, regret, and survivor’s guilt that she can’t seem to escape, but she’s still doing her best to wrench an okay life from the wreckage of her past. She sees things that no one else sees that can give her information that she wouldn’t otherwise know, but can she actually see ghosts or is she severely mentally ill? Psychiatrists tell her it’s just hallucinations, but she is not confident of either explanation, and it makes her an unintentionally unreliable narrator. If she can’t trust that what she’s experiencing is actually happening, how can we the reader tell if it is or not? I’m not usually much for unreliable narrators, but an unintentionally unreliable narrator was fascinating.

I am glad I read this in broad daylight, because there were several spots where I had to yank my imagination out of the story and remind myself that it’s just a story, nothing is after me, and even if this is real it won’t get Claire because the book already told me she survives. It’s intense, emotional, and terrifying. I loved trying to piece together what happened on the Aurora from the bizarre, gruesome clues and trying to separate reality from unreality in Claire’s perception. My husband got to read this book vicariously as I told him each new revelation like it was hot gossip and sent multi-paragraph texts with my theories for how it went down. I started making a list in my head of all my friends who like scifi and/or horror who I could tell about this book.

Then about 80% in I finally got the reveal of what was really going on in the Aurora, and the whole glorious, vibrant, terrifying story fell apart.

I think I would have been less upset about it if I hadn’t already guessed the answer. Not only did I guess it less than a third of the way in, I immediately dismissed the guess because, as I told my husband, “It would be a really cheap answer.” And once I knew the answer and found it lacking, I found myself forcefully ejected from the magic of the story. Where the first 80% was deliciously nerve-wracking and vividly emotional, the last 20% felt predictable and melodramatic. The emotions felt less realistically overwhelming and more repetitive and overdone. The atmosphere of dread and the urgency of the very real threat to Claire’s life completely dissipated once I knew the ordinary, boring reason behind it, and once I wasn’t caught up in the volatile emotions of the story, I could see every plot point coming. And to top it all off, the two questions that kept me reading through that last 20% never get answered.

I don’t regret the read – at least now that I’ve had some time to let my rage at that ending simmer down. The atmospheric horror and the bizarre and gruesome mystery of the first 80% of the story were absolutely worth the time, and for as frustrated as I am with the answer to that mystery, I enjoyed the first 80% so much that I’m willing to overlook the sins of the last 20%. And let’s be honest here, my opinion that the answer was a cheap cop-out is just my opinion. Maybe I know too much about the relevant science to find it believable, or maybe I’m just mad that I guessed it so early. You may find it engrossing and thrilling all the way through. Personally, I’m glad I read it, but I don’t know that I’ll be recommending it to all my friends anytime soon – at least not the ones who know a lot about the real-world science behind this story.

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artene's review against another edition

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dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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litalia's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Most of the book, where they were exploring the Aurora, was fantastic. Once the mystery started to be revealed and the action ramped up, I felt it lost a lot of what made it so appealing earlier.

The audiobook reader is fantastic!

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