Fleeing her family and an interplanetary political scandal, Halley takes an undesirable, poorly paid job that will allow her to disappear into anonymity and isolation far from civilization. She signs up to essentially be a watch-person on the Elysian Fields, a derelict spaceship carrying the cryogenically preserved bodies of yesteryear’s wealthy elite. The long-abandoned cryo program was created by an eccentric tech trillionaire Zale Winfeld, whose children now haunt the ship as AI hologram ‘hosts’ for the facility that no longer even serves as a museum.
Alone on the ship apart from the glitchy AI avatars and video communications with Karl, the ship’s mechanic who hired her, Halley quickly becomes unsettled within the solitude. Odd noises throughout the ship and shadowy figures in the hallway soon combine with mysteries surrounding the identity of some of the cryo ‘residents’, the nature of the AI ‘hosts’, and the motivations of Karl. Trapped on the ship trying to keep her sanity, Halley tries to figure out the truth while facing the memories of what she has fled.
Following up on Dead Silence and Ghost Station, S.A. Barnes continues to solidify herself with Cold Eternity as a leading voice in SF Horror, particular within the theme of isolation in space. While the novels might very well exist in a shared universe, each story has been stand-alone, making it easy for readers to discover her writing with any volume. Where Ghost Station sits more within psychological horror, Barnes ultimately mines other branches of horror in Cold Eternity.
The isolation of the Elysian Fields dominates the first half of the novel, but surprisingly not to delve much into the psychology or deterioration of Halley. In fact, Halley is notable as a character in this novel that she perseveres through the threats she faces without coming apart or falling prey to the environment. The isolation of the setting instead mainly serves to set up atmosphere and allow the plot to unfurl. I feel as though the first half of the book could have been shortened. The creepy atmosphere of the station plays well at first, but begins to become familiar and drag until Halley begins to make realizations about the situation she’s in and the nature of the players involved.
By the second half of the novel up to its conclusion there is a rise in action and revelation that I found worked very well, particularly in how it fuses elements of SF and technological speculation with gothic and cult horror. All the pieces Barnes employs here will be familiar with genre readers. But I’ve not seen the pieces put together in this sort of way before, particularly in combining futuristic SF settings and technology with supernatural elements. I do wish Barnes had done even more with these, particularly in drawing them together better with the events of Halley’s past.
Cold Eternity is a novel where one doesn’t want to go into many details on what happens or what exactly it all involves. The focus on Halley in solitude and the largely physical absence of other characters (until the end) put severe limitations on the book in that its success relies so much on enjoyment of the atmosphere and ultimate plot revelations. The reader is stuck with Halley alone with her own thoughts. This could easily turn sour with a character who annoys a reader. Barnes avoids that well, but likewise doesn’t quite make Halley compelling enough (or changed enough through the novel) to make her utterly captivating either.
For me the best aspects of Cold Eternity are how Barnes integrates technology with eldritch and gothic horror. Fans of SF Horror fusion (such as Event Horizon) should give it a try, particularly if you’ve read and enjoyed Barnes’ work before.
