Review by Booklist Review
Halley Zwick needs to disappear. A political scandal has put a giant target on her back, and she needs a place to fade away. When she comes across a job posting for Elysian Fields--a floating cemetery of cryogenically frozen people who'd hoped for cures never found hundreds of years ago--she thinks she's found the perfect spot to hide. Halley's job is simple: make rounds on the ship and push a "check in" button so someone knows it's being manned in exchange for room, board, and meager wages. But she soon finds that nothing about her new home is simple. At first, Halley thinks she's seeing things--with only herself and her boss on board, there couldn't be anything slithering around on the floor, right? And surely those objects in the old exhibition rooms hadn't moved by themselves, had they? It doesn't take long for her to realize that things at Elysian Fields are not at all what they seem, and the underlying disquiet felt throughout the novel explodes into a frantic crescendo. Readers won't want to put down Barnes' latest (after Ghost Station, 2024) sf--horror hybrid.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This chilling blend of science fiction and horror from Barnes (Ghost Station) explores ethical questions about whistleblowing against the eerie backdrop of a spectral spaceship full of cryogenically preserved corpses. Halley Zwick goes into hiding to avoid testifying about the complex web of governmental corruption she accidentally uncovered. A job on the Elysian Fields provides the perfect cover. The ship was built more than 150 years ago as the impermanent resting place for early space colonists rich and famous enough to be cryogenically frozen, only to be later turned into a morbid, orbiting museum when reviving those frozen proved virtually impossible. The setting is creepy in itself, and Barnes teases out the tension with tantalizing hints about inhabitants of the ship who may be even more frightening than the corpses. The suspense builds to a fever pitch as Halley begins questioning her sanity. Barnes also paints a believable, if bleak, portrait of the state of humanity several centuries from now, which adds to the terror of the events unfolding within the novel. It's not for the faint of heart. Agent: Suzie Townsend, New Leaf Literary. (Apr.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
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.--Matthew Galloway
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