While all of that sucks, the biggest problem for me is the choice of protagonist, who's our first-person POV throughout the novel.

Then there's also a cute romantic ending that made me gag.

So much gruesomeness is depicted going on in Claire's senses during her struggle to get off the ship before Max blows it up that it just becomes static to the reader after a while and you become a bit numb to it. Max, just kill her, don't do the Bond villain thing.) (Except Claire didn't know until Max infodumped all of it onto her. (view spoiler) [The rest of it has Claire having to go back to the ghost ship with Verux personnel to ostensibly rescue any surviving members of her crew but actually to be murdered and framed in a Verux plot of muwhahaha evil proportions of it turns out Aurora's passengers going murderously insane was a result of Verux trying to sabotage its competition, CitiFutura, thus the ship, evidence, and anyone who knows the truth must be blown to smithereens. (Spoiler: The successful first part is what the official description of the book covers. Some parts really work but others don't, and as a result Dead Silence doesn't hang together very well as a whole.

I only gave this book two stars because I liked the first part, which was quite creepy and had some great and effective images and tension, which was much more successful than the rest of it.

The ship of the dead book