Ghost Station
by S.A. Barnes
A woman with a troubled past is sent somewhere where she isn’t wanted. She does this in part as a mechanism to deal with her guilt and trauma. The woman is Dr. Ophelia Bray, a psychologist specializing in the treatment and prevention of a condition called Eckhardt Riser Syndrome or ERS, which has similarities to PTSD and is caused by prolonged time periods spent in space and cold sleep. We are in a not too distant future. Space exploration and exploitation seem to be run by big capitalist corporations. Ophelia’s family owns one of these companies. Ophelia is not wanted by her family either.
Ophelia feels responsible for the traumatic events of her past. She also feels trapped by her infamous family name and what that family stands for.
In an attempt to alleviate her pain and to work on the treatment of ERS in the field, she decides to join an exploration mission to a far away planet with an abandoned research station and a mysterious alien city, half underground.
The three month trip is taken in cold sleep. When she wakes up three months later, she is badly pranked by two crew members as a first not-so-welcome. The crew apparently has the maturity of teenagers. They are openly hostile towards her and don’t want her interfering in their mission and looking over their shoulders.
Ophelia is a traumatized bundle of fears, bad memories, family issues and phobias. We spend way too much time on her navel gazing in the first 30% of the book. She is obsessively analyzing everything.
When the crew finds out who she is, they are not above fan-girling over her family, despite hating her. Everybody but the mission commander and the pilot feel and behave as if they are 17 years old.
By the time the crew lands on the planet and starts to explore the abandoned research station, I was ready to toss this book. On top of the immature impression I was getting from the characters, I was struggling to remain interested in the unvarying tone of the audio narration. I am sure I was supposed to feel uneasiness about the planet and the station creeping up on me. Instead I was mostly exasperated with how unstable and insecure Ophelia was.
We spent a lot of time in Ophelia‘s head up to that point and her flashbacks to the cause of her own trauma. It made me wonder about this world she lives in and what organisation thought it was a good idea to send someone so traumatized into an unknown situation with the task of ensuring the mental stability of her crew mates.
30% into the book the story started to become more interesting and I had settled into the fact that a large part of the book was Ophelia‘s inner monologue about her own insecurities and doubts.
When the action finally picked up, the story wasn‘t bad. They figure out why the research station was abandoned and what gruesome thing happened to the previous crew. Lots of action in the last part. Not bad, but not very original. It‘s been done in a similar fashion and better. I felt little suspense and it wasn’t very scary either. Ophelia finally sees the light and gets some closure on her issues. Nice epilogue.
Meh. 👽👽👽
My feelings about Dead Silence (my review) were pretty similar, so I doubt I will pick up anything else by the author.
Cathy's Reading Bonanza 