Review: Ghost Station by S.A. Barnes

Ghost Station by S.A. Barnes
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was provided both a print and audio ARC of this book via Netgalley, all opinions are my own.

The audio narration was great.  The narrator did distinctive voices for each character, making it easy for the listener to distinguish between characters.  I always appreciate that, especially when there are multiple characters with a good bit of dialogue.

Ophelia is a psychologist assigned to a crew tasked with exploring an abandoned planet and investigate what happened to the previous crew.  Ophelia is tasked with keeping them mentally healthy after the loss of one of their crewmates on a previous mission and after a condition called ERS has become more prevalent for those that spend alot of time in space.  ERS has been known to make people violent, and Ophelia has dedicated her life to studying and preventing the disease after experiencing it's effects first hand as a child.  

Upon landing on the desolate planet and beginning explorations, the crew begins to exhibit strange behaviors that mimic ERS.  The crew has not warmed up to Ophelia for many reasons, and no one wants to be diagnosed with ERS.  When one of the crew turns up dead, Ophelia has to unearth the skeleton's in her closet and work with the remaining members of the team to figure out if they are sick or if there is something else going on.

This is my first book by the author, so I wasn't sure what to expect.  This book was extremely atmospheric.  This blurs the lines between sci-fi, horror, and thriller.  I definitely got the creepy, desolate vibes the author was going for.    

I thought the premise was really interesting and the author did a good job describing the planet and the surroundings.  I did find the writing repetitive at times especially when it came to Ophelia's character arc.  I feel like had the author stuck with the weird planet plotline or the medical plotline this book would have been a knockout, but there were too many threads of stuff about Ophelia's family, her job, the crew, and the planet going on for it to be a cohesive story.  I was a bit disappointed in the ending, as the action starts to build up to something that doesn't ever happen.  Honestly, I expected a little more death and destruction from a space horror, but this is more of a mystery/thriller.  There is some gore and the descriptions are good, but I wanted a little more suspense and scare factor.  I felt like finally when we got to the good part when the action was picking up and the horror elements were really taking off, it ended in what I feel was an unsatisfying way.

Overall, I thought this was entertaining but the conclusion was underwhelming.  

View all my reviews