I swear I made a point of reading an actual novel over Supergirl fanfiction for once — something currently near impossible for me to do since my appetite for more Supercorp focused stories to rectify the shortcomings of the CW show is pretty insatiable — in order to alleviate some of the shame of being 4 books behind schedule on my Goodreads 2024 Reading Challenge. It’s not my fault Lena Luthor seemingly followed me over to Ghost Station.

For those not obsessed with the Kara Danvers / Lena Luthor ship, let me summarize Lena for you (there’s a point to this, I swear!): she is the green-eyed, black sheep daughter of one of the world’s richest families, psychologically scarred from surviving horrific traumas and abusive family dynamics that have left her feeling damaged beyond repair, molded by broken trust and betrayal, and beholden to the idea that maybe someday she will stop feeling (and being seen as) guilty by association if she goes above and beyond to prove herself to be better than those she comes from, dedicating her life to counterbalancing all the ways in which her corrupt family is held aloft economically by abusive practices that further support societal inequality. That’s who Lena Luthor is, and it’s also exactly who Ghost Station’s protagonist, Dr. Ophelia Bray, is.

Admittedly, obsessively collecting passages (16 total) for a game of “Ophelia Bray or Supergirl’s Bae” (working title) may have made me feel a bit mental and react unfairly to Ophelia seeing as it spurred a desperation in me to latch onto any differences between the two, hoping for some greater disparity to sever the comparison tether. You can’t do much with hair color, but Ophelia being a psychologist… that could be interesting to work with.

Some necessary exposition: Ophelia has been assigned to a small group of planetary explorers sent to collect samples from and observe the remains of a long dead alien civilization, all the while figuring out why a competing company was willing to part with their claim to the site. Her goal is to help develop preventative practices that will combat the relatively new diagnosis of ERS, a cognitive degeneration catalyzed by prolonged time away from the typical day/night cycles and familiar environments humans have spent millennia adapting to, which can lead to mood swings, depression, paranoia, hallucinations, and violence.

Basically Ophelia’s constant cries of “it could be ERS!” combined with some suspicious activity in and around the station (some real, some hard to explain, some potentially imagined) sets up the perfect Sunshine scenario — about 2% of you will understand the implications of that comparison; the rest of you, go watch Sunshine, I’m begging you — which would be fine on it’s own, but it also would be a bit disappointing given the potential of the setting. Which brings me back to saying I may have gone a bit mental and unfair to Ophelia. 

Long story short, what I mean is I was begging S.A. Barnes to go full tilt into the psychological horror aspects: gaslight Ophelia within an inch of her life, leave her in the wreckage of the protective walls she built to keep the memories of past trauma at bay, completely destabilize the solid ground she poured with years of psychological study, give us the back half of whatever the space version of The Descent is as mental fortitude passes the torch to whatever the brain must do (whatever lies it must tell itself) to survive… break her soul. But then maybe give her Ripley’s final girl survivability because I’m not a monster and I already feel awful for shamelessly chanting “MORE GASLIGHTING” for the majority of the book. 

So yes to Sunshine, but also yes to some The Thing chicanery with its ratcheted up paranoia (dealer’s choice on whether it is purely human distrust, slow alien manipulation, or full skinsuit infiltration), as well as going all in on the unreliable narrator confusion as the known rules of existence no longer apply à la Annihilation. Is that too much to ask? 

I’m not actually going to answer that for you. What I will say is I did get some of what I wanted — I’m still confused about some of what happened on that planet, whether or not Ophelia even knows or interpreted things correctly — and I definitely had a good time, all the while Ophelia did not. Again, sorry for cheering against you, Ophelia. It’s all Lena Luthor’s fault.