A Cold Silence

Plot summary

Twenty years after escaping the cursed village of Darnshaw with her son Ben, Cass is horrified when Ben decides to go back. His childhood friend Jessica has died, and he wants to attend her funeral. Cass forbids it, haunted by the trauma they suffered there, but Ben goes anyway.

In Darnshaw, he reunites with old friends and learns Jessica killed herself after playing a computer game called Archeron. The game is tied to the occult and grants wishes, but demands something in return. After discovering the game has caused other young people's deaths, Ben and his friends travel to the game's developers in London to find out what is really happening.

Critical reception

Reviewing A Cold Silence in Sci-Fi Bulletin, Marie O'Regan called the book 'an involving sequel' to its predecessor. She said it shows the impact the events in A Cold Season had on Cass and her son, and described Ben as 'a worthwhile protagonist'. O'Regan liked the way the novel builds up to its 'final reveal' and conclusion, and gave A Cold Silence a score of seven out of ten. In a more critical review at Tor.com, Niall Alexander described A Cold Silence as 'an exhausting' and 'tedious sequel' to A Cold Season.

He complained that some of the scenarios in the book drag on for pages and pages and rely on 'careless characterisation and casual narrative contrivance'. He called the book's antagonist 'cartoonish', and said Ben has 'all the personality of a pencil'. Alexander stated that A Cold Silence's premise is 'promising' but 'little of it is convincing'.

Stephen Theaker wrote in a review in Black Static that of Littlewood's first six books, A Cold Silence is a 'definite misfire'. (Of the six books, he named The Hidden People her 'best novel yet'.) Theaker felt that while the effect the computer game Archeron has on people in A Cold Silence 'is fascinating [and] an excellent idea rich with the potential', it all takes place in the novel's backstory. He said the bulk of the book is dominated by a couple of 'very, very long conversations' and not much else. Theaker concluded that A Cold Silence is an 'admirable' sequel to A Cold Season, but one that has not worked.