I thoroughly enjoyed S. A. Barnes's debut novel, 'Dead Silence', a couple of years ago and I'm not far off the same level of enjoyment with her unrelated but thematically similar follow up in 'Ghost Station'. I should mention that, technically, these aren't her first two books, as she's published an abundance of titles under the name of Stacey Kade, but those are far from horror/science fiction crossovers. They're much happier-looking and I presume primarily count as paranormal romance for young adults. These are firmly adult books, even if people don't tend to have sex in them.
I found 'Ghost Station' to be a little more of a slow burn and certainly more focused in location but even more powerful in its claustrophobic sense of mood than the second half of 'Dead Silence'. In many other ways, the commonalities between 'Dead Silence' and 'Ghost Station' are pretty clear pretty early.
For a start, they both take place in deep space, this one entirely so, and in the firm future. In this instance, it's 2199 and mankind has expanded into other star systems, established space stations and encountered the remnants of alien civilisations; though never yet living breathing aliens, so the idea of true first contact is even more tantalising to these characters than it is to us today. In a way, this is a sort of first contact novel, but, in a way, it isn't and that I'm still trying to figure that out is a good way to highlight that what the crew of the Resilience discover on Lyria 393-C is alien indeed.
The lead character is Dr. Ophelia Bray, a psychologist for the Montrose corporation, even though they're a prime competitor to Pinnacle, the company run by her family, who have been immensely rich and powerful ever since inventing QuickQ, a sort of always-on implant that's like the internet on steroids. We start out with her being put into cryogenic sleep for the trip to the Resilience, so she can work with its crew after they lost one of their own, Ava Olberman, on a previous planet. It has to be said that she doesn't do much therapy in this book, partly because this crew is hostile to her presence and partly because things get creepy too quickly for her to be effective at her job.
Barnes throws a lot at us early on, enough that there are single pages that achieve multiple goals on their own. Page 33 for instance explores worldbuilding, through Lyria 393-C being one of those planets with a dead alien civilisation; future culture, through the concept of "collectors", who add another piercing for each planet they visit and survive; and character development, through Ava's loss having clear resonance with the Resilience's crew. We learn about every member of the crew and their purpose as an R&E Unit, Reclamation and Exploration meaning that they survey planets and establish residency claims for their company.
A second commonality is that there's a deadly past for our lead, which I won't entirely spoil as the gradual revelation of background details throughout the book deserves to be preserved. What we know immediately is that she's an expert in ERS, or Eckhart-Reiser Syndrome, a sort of contagious space PTSD. That's one reason why the Resilience's crew don't want her there, because they don't want to consider that ERS might be a danger for themand some literally don't believe it existsbut they also don't like that she's a Bray, so clearly a rich kid slumming it for kicks rather than any potentially useful benefit to their mission. There's much more to come, of course, but you'll need to pick up a copy of 'Ghost Station' to find out what.
A third is this lead's need to escape, even if it's not as pressing a concern here as it was for Claire Kovalik in 'Dead Silence'. Olivia doesn't have any supernatural abilities, just a traumatic past that wasn't her fault in any way. However, a fourth is the fact that she fails to escape, or least finds her way from a known traumatic past to an unknown traumatic future, and it arrives quicker. It took a while for Claire to reach the 'Aurora' in 'Dead Silence' and there was a lot going on outside it. The few scenes outside the Pinnacle base on Lyria 393-C here are at the very beginning and very much building towards it. We're in the creepy zone for almost the entire book.
And the fifth commonality is the mystery that unfolds there. Why is this base so large? Everyone in this R&E team expected the six months they'd spend there to be cramped and claustrophobic. In reality, they're spacious and claustrophobic. Why did Pinnacle abandon it, especially for Montrose to effectively take it over? And why did they wait six years for them to do so, given that renewal of rights is due every three? In doing all of that, they effectively ceded not only their own base but a whole planet to their competition, one that happens to contain one of those alien civilisations. Of course, something's going to happen and clearly it isn't going to happen for the first time.
'Ghost Station' is surely slower-paced than 'Dead Silence' but I have no problem with that. I found Barnes's ability to evoke atmosphere with her settings and her prose truly powerful. I also found her ability to continually deepen the background of the universe she's created admirable. Sure, a story can creep along, "creep" having a double meaning there, but what could be seen as a rather simple progression is embellished to no small degree by fleshing out characters and especially an entire universe as a backdrop. These are all strong points for me.
What I could have had a problem with is how little psychology our psychologist lead gets to do. It works well with Olivia's observational skills, born of being literally trained to read people. It fails with Olivia's actual mission, because the work she does on Lyria 393-C is rarely close to what she's been sent there to do. I didn't like this much but I could buy into it, given the conflict she stumbles into on arrival and the hallucinatory chaos that quickly descends. I could have had much more of a problem with this than I actually did, so not a strong point for me but not a weak one either, even if I can see some readers seeing it that way.
What I found weak in this one was the way Ophelia seemed far more vulnerable than she should as a highly qualified psychologist. Sure, maybe that's because she finds that she's unable to keep as many of her secrets either at all or for as long as she'd liked; but, without much therapy to conduct to give her a professional grounding, we end up judging her through her thinking and there she's a bit of a mess, not what we'd expect for a character trusted with this particular mission. There's a subtle romantic angle too that felt thoroughly juvenile but fortunately not pursued. Ophelia gets a little doe-eyed over a big and gruff manly man on the crew, but it doesn't go much further.
All in all, I'd rank this highly but not quite so highly as 'Dead Silence'. It has a similar approach, far beyond both books being horror/science fiction hybrids, so they fit pretty well together. If you like one, you're probably going to like the other too. However, it does tackle some things differently, with mixed results. In some ways, it's the better book. In others, it falls a little short. And what I'd take away from that is that I'm thoroughly looking forward to 'Cold Eternity', apparently due next year. ~~ Hal C F Astell
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