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Summary
Summary
"Perfectly unsettling. Scratches the itch for space horror just right--and doesn't shrink from the grisly consequences of exploring the unknown." --Chloe Gong
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 Eckhart-Reiser syndrome (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 the crew is hiding something.
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.
Also by S.A. Barnes :
Dead Silence
Cold Eternity
Author Notes
S.A. BARNES, author of Dead Silence, works in a high school library by day, recommending reads, talking with students, and removing the occasional forgotten cheese-stick-as-bookmark. Barnes has published numerous novels across different genres under the pen name Stacey Kade. She lives in Illinois with more dogs and books than is advisable and a very patient husband.
Reviews (2)
Booklist Review
Ophelia Bray has worked hard to escape the orbit of her influential family by joining a competing corporation and is attempting to salvage her career by signing on for a reclamation and exploration mission. She awakens from cold sleep en route to an abandoned habitat on the distant planet Lyria 393-C and tries to integrate into a tight-knit team dealing with a loss. From the start, the team is unsettled by materials left behind, missing equipment, and the unusual conditions in which the previous team left their habitat. As Ophelia's group tries to complete their mission and figure out the mystery of what happened on the previous assignment, they deal with their own issues, and Ophelia tries to put the secrets of her father's legacy and her family's privilege behind her. Fans of the original Alien film will enjoy this tense psychological-horror story set in a far-flung future as the crew tries to identify the forces at play while navigating the atrocities of their corporate employer, which they know all too well.
Library Journal Review
Ophelia is a psychiatrist in the year 2199, specializing in treating space explorers who suffer from ERS, a disease that presents itself in violence--most notably, a mass killing of 29 people. She joins a mission to claim a planet that held sentient life in the past to study the crew who are mourning the mysterious loss of a crew member on their last trip. They are holding on to their secrets tightly, but Ophelia is an expert at keeping secrets herself. The horrors of the isolation and loneliness of space travel are enhanced by Barnes's writing, as she only allows readers to see Ophelia's unreliable point of view and utilizes slow-burn pacing to perfection, expertly building the world and relentlessly intensifying the dread. Barnes simultaneously slips in small doses of terror that get and stay under readers' skin, until the entire narrative explodes and holds them entranced for its final act. VERDICT Barnes (Dead Silence) is quickly cementing herself as the go-to author in space horror. This will appeal to fans of sci-fi/horror hybrids that are heavy on the planetary-exploration details, such as David Wellington's Paradise-1, and also readers who enjoy the psychologically intense polar horror of Ally Wilkes.
