Rating:

“Some of us are broken enough that we don’t get to be fixed.”

Author: S.A. Barnes

Dr. Ophelia Bray is in way over her head – far more than her adversarial crew mates realize. This is her first space-based mission. Her job is to watch the crew for signs of ERS, a deadly, infectious condition that might have led one of their previous members (Ava) to her isolated and inexplicable death. ERS manifests through self-harm and, worse still, murderous psychotic rampages. But it’s preventable, even treatable, if caught in time. But Ophelia is not bringing her A game. She is distracted, haunted by nightmares from her childhood and the violent suicide of her most recent patient. She is actively running away, seeking to hide from her own problems in her patient’s scrambled heads.

The crew’s job is to land on the desolate planet of Lyria 393-C. This is one of the few planets that has relics of an alien civilization. It was recently and inexplicably sold. The crew is here to scope the lay of the land and get some samples. But naturally, when they arrive on planet, things start to go awry.

The station was left in disarray by the previous corporation. Then – the crew starts to find the bodies. Meanwhile, Ophelia begins to have more active reoccurrences from her past. Is she regressing? Is something that was dead in her coming alive? Is something on this alien planet still very active? Or is this just a simple case of ERS that she, a failed psychologist consumed with her own problems, is neither recognizing nor treating?

Ghost Station has a fairly decent premise and a cool atmosphere. What’s not to love about an abandoned, hostile alien planet; a secretive, grieving, crew; and a protagonist who is an outsider with a traumatic past. It should fit, right? Plus, there are dead alien bodies from thousands of years ago, their civilization mysteriously wrecked by – maybe whatever is still on the planet? And those weird rock spires? It sounds like the set-up for a good, creepy story, right?

Image by Fran Soto from Pixabay

Wrong. Most of the time we’re stuck in Ophelia’s looping psychoanalysis and naval gazing. When we’re not doing that, there is a lot of dead space with people just sitting around the station, disliking each other, bickering, and waiting for something to happen.  Even worse, this enormous expanse of time is not used to develop any of the vast cast of surrounding characters or to build a sense of relationship and character so that the impending slaughter will mean anything beyond body count.

That’s honestly my biggest complaint with Ghost Station – the slowness of the pace. The story feels lost for a good three fourths of the book, like it’s trying to figure out where it wants to go. Do we want to, for example, make Ophelia the monster or the hero? Do we want to go into her past and the way that her father was one of the first (and most notable) ERS victims? Do we want to go into her privileged background as juxtaposed by the horribleness of her capitalistic, do-whatever-we-want-to-whomever family? Do we want to go into her selfishness or the way in which she was betrayed?

Maybe  . . . but then again, maybe after a couple hundred pages we want to instead shift to focus on the suspicious nature of the crew and how each member might have had something to do with the disappearance of Ava. Perhaps it was the jocular but cruel scientist (Suresh), perhaps it was the second in command, Birch, with his miner background, who might know who Ophelia’s father really is, or Kate, the smart engineer, or maybe Liana, the only nice one of the bunch. Maybe it’s even the hot captain, Severin, who’s cold but fair. None of these people have a personality beyond the one line I’ve just given them, despite the hundreds of pages we spend with them, but the narrative shifts between us suspecting them and us suspecting Ophelia, with bits and pieces of “don’t forget this planet is CREEPY and this station is EMPTY” in between. Soon, it gets dull. Ophelia is smart, but whiny. We’re over it already.

But finally, finally, there’s a bit of action. Things start to move, the pace goes intro thriller mode, and it does get better, sort of. But the logic here is highly suspect. A lot of things are forgotten or discarded. People become expendable, plot lines that were drawn clearly become hazy and fade, things happen and then dissipate. Dues ex machina comes along for the rescue, insta-love and insta-understanding save Ophelia from her own waffling neurosis, she gets to be the hero, and we’re left with a “what the hell just happened?” moment at the end.

I honestly struggled on what to rate this. Barnes’ previous book, Dead Silence, remains one of the best, most atmospheric, most character driven novels I have ever read. It is, hands down, one of my all-time favorite books. Ghost Station, however, is a book with a lot of potential that is greatly underdelivered, despite throwing everything and the kitchen sink into the setup only to panic and sprint towards a rapid-fire conclusion that tried desperately to hide a panoply of flaws. I didn’t hate it, but that’s probably because I read rapidly and I’ve only recently discovered half horror, half sci-fi stuff and still have a high tolerance for anything with creepy-isolated planet vibes. I don’t know. Give me a few more years to indulge myself fully, and I’ll probably drop the rating even further. As it was, because I read it quickly and I was in the right headspace, the idea and the planet kept me entertained. I had expected so much more, though. I’m still eagerly anticipating Barnes’ Cold Eternity in April because Dead Silence was a masterpiece, but Ghost Station is just going to stay chilling on my phone instead of joining my rare physical book purchases. Just ehhhh.

 

– Frances Carden

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Frances Carden
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