Cold Eternity

Thanks for the eARC, Tor and Netgalley!

A creepy little thrill ride on a big ol cryo zoo. Sort of.
I've liked both SA Barnes' books, but they all suffer from Too Much Story. There's a lot of lines that, in Cold Eternity, crossed over for a big finale. But it was still too much story, too many lines. And the sort of paranormal aspect, the creep factor, always has some sort of speculative “real world” explanation, which may work for a lot of people, just not me.

Still creepy though. Like, really creepy. And Katerina's ability to write off the abnormal in favor of believing the most “logical” explanation makes it even creepier at times.

Thanks to NetGalley, Macmillan Audio, and Tor Nightfire for the audiobook arc.

Halley, a young woman on the run, takes a job off a sketchy forum. The offer is for far below the established minimum wage, which will force her to work for longer just to scrape up enough for passage somewhere, but at least it’s on a ship that’s so unlikely to be visited that it’s almost a home run. And where her boss is unlikely to come face to face with her, and the people that may or may not be after her are unlikely to find her, there’s no way she can refuse.

The job seems easy, patrol the corridors, keep things need, clean, functional, and press a single button every three hours—every three on the dot. If she doesn’t, a warning alarm will go off and her boss’s superiors may visit to see why HE wasn’t pressing the button. She’s to remain a complete secret. You can sleep for two hours and fifty minutes every three hours, but you’ll never sleep through the night. I guess I didn’t really think about it while reading, but could you imagine the pressure of that? It would start as an annoyance, maybe a small headache or pain behind the eyes, then over time it would change into irritability, outright anger, paranoia—perhaps hallucinations? That sort of aching, growing atmosphere in the background was almost like The Shining to me. Creeping-insanity-esque.

Outside of atmosphere, I really liked how quickly this one got off the ground. Halley’s past is left unresolved enough to be intriguing and her immediate scare on the new ship draws the reader right in. The AI projections are startlingly creepy at times, and although I wouldn’t liken them to M3gan (especially as they aren’t solid) it was a somewhat unique and futuristic addition to the book. I also enjoyed that they were not just thrown in, their inclusion is tied directly to the story.

As for the twist, which I will not ruin, it worked for me. It was eerie and unique and ultimately paid off in a way I found more enjoyable than Ghost Station. I did feel like it could have gone on for a tad longer, but that’s okay. In a story that felt like a creepy haunting or even creature story, the landing was a bit different.

Spooky and gory! Nothing groundbreaking but sometimes that’s all you need!