Cold Eternity by S.A. Barnes [Review]

Cold Eternity by S.A. Barnes
Format: ebook
Source: purchased
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Date read: August 10, 2025

Purchase Links: Paperback | Kindle

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S.A. Barnes
| Website | Amazon |

Synopsis (Goodreads):

Halley is on the run from an interplanetary political scandal that has put a huge target on her back. She heads for what seems like the perfect place to lay low: a gigantic space barge storing the cryogenically frozen bodies of Earth’s most fortunate citizens from more than a century ago…

The cryo program, created by trillionaire tech genius Zale Winfeld, is long defunct, and the AI hologram "hosts," ghoulishly created in the likeness of Winfeld’s three adult children, are glitchy. The ship feels like a crypt, and the isolation gets to Halley almost immediately. She starts to see figures crawling in the hallways, and there’s a constant scraping, slithering, and rattling echoing in the vents.

It’s not long before Halley realizes she may have gotten herself trapped in an even more dangerous situation than the one she was running from….

Thoughts on Cold Eternity: No lie, S.A. Barnes gives excellent creeping horror in space. Just so wonderfully creepy.

On the run, unable to trust anyone thanks to her previous employer's long reach, Halley grabs onto what seems to be the perfect job - one where she's acting as a caretaker for an outdated cryo barge. She'll be pretty much alone on the ship, which means no one can sneak up on her and take her out of the equation. She'll have time to regroup and figure out what her next steps are.

Even before she takes the job, Halley has the "if things look too good to be true" thought, but she's running out of options and time and a person's gotta do what a person's gotta do. Even if it seems a little sketchy.

So she takes the job and soon finds herself on a ship of frozen people. While they're technically all dead, they all believed technology would advance and they could be revived. Which means the ship is peopled by wealthy, frozen individuals who have entombed themselves with their wealth for the day they would be brought back. Yeah, it's already kind of creepy before Halley starts seeing something stalking the halls. But she's running on minimal sleep and adrenaline and the other employee on the ship assures her none of the cryo frozen individuals could unfreeze themselves so it's probably just her imagination getting the best of her.

Spoiler: It's probably not.

Throw in a hyper realistic AI program that seems to know more than it can say and things start getting really weird.

Creepy, crawly, and wonderfully atmospheric. *thumbs up* on so many levels.