Whisper House Press

Title: Cold Eternity (9781250884954)

Genre: Space Horror 👻

Author: S.A. Barnes

Publisher: Tor Nightfire

Anticipated Pub Date: April 8, 2025

Steve’s Rating: 4.5 ⭐ out of 5 ⭐

I am so glad Tor Nightfire (apparently) made a three-book deal with S.A. Barnes, a fellow educator-author who’s become one of my favorite writers working today. Her latest, Cold Eternity, takes what worked really well with Dead Silence (2022) and Ghost Station (2024) and absolutely rips (that’s a good thing) a new story with new characters, all of which build on those successes.

I loved that those earlier stories offered characters’ choices that  made sense given who their actions showed them to be. I shivered at the sense of growing dread Barnes built through increasing and eventually explosive bouts of tension finessed into the plots of those books, and I felt compelled, as I wrote in my review of Ghost Station, to keep reading until I was through the whole story.

At the start of Barnes’ latest, our protagonist Halley is on the run from the consequences of well-intentioned but naive choices made from a position of privilege, and she’s slumming it, looking for under-the-table work that’ll keep her fed without letting folks know who she is. Halley takes on a spaceship caretaker’s role on a massive, supposedly dead ship… tasked with making what amount to janitorial rounds and pressing a check-in button every three hours, our main character is reduced as the story proceeds and she realizes she’s not alone. What ensues is more than a little creepy, even for a seasoned horror reader.

Barnes’ narrative voice is strongest when our character is alone, facing insurmountable odds, and gathering from her core what she needs to survive. The settings are again standouts in this novel, as they were in Barnes’ first two. The political intrigue at times feels a bit forced, but this is a slight knock against an otherwise stellar (no pun this time) work of great skill and artistry.

I recommend you read this book. If you’re not sure about space horror, give it a whirl. If you already know S.A. Barnes’ work, you didn’t need to read this review because you already knew you wanted more from this author. It’s coming, April 2025, from Tor Nightfire.