
The hallways of the
Elysian Fields spaceship should ring with only Halley’s footsteps as she patrols coffins of the almost dead—so why does she hear scraping and scuttling behind the walls? Desperation sent her to the famed ship where the wealthy are preserved to someday be cured of injury, disease, or advanced age. But they’ll never be revived because the technology was so faulty that humanity abandoned it. In a Lost-like setup, Halley’s job is to push a button every three hours, and the lack of sleep might explain why she sees creeping shadows on her security feeds just before they glitch. Barnes (
Ghost Station) is skilled at recognizing what readers will expect and manipulating their hypotheses born from consuming countless horror stories. The twists will have them wondering if this is akin to
Alien,
Midnight Mass,
The Others, or anything in between. Theorizing is a delight, even as each guess is ravaged. Underneath it all is a timely exploration of ethics and the power of an individual to shape the future.
VERDICT Space horror at its most entertaining. Fans of Caitlin Starling and Jo Kaplan will love the atmospheric chills and visceral horrors of one of literature’s creepiest horror settings.
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