The First Omega is set in a dystopian world with some serious Mad Max vibes. We follow the protagonist, who other people call Riley, as she faces the threats to the lifestyle she has been leading. Living on the outskirts of the city and working for the company Pac-At as a loss prevention operator with a license to prevent loss of Pac-At’s cargo by any means necessary. To get a take on my thoughts on The First Omega, continue reading down below!

In all honesty, I was reading The First Omega as an Ebook and forgot it was a novella. I was then surprised when I was almost done with the book. I think that this definitely affected my impressions of the novella.

Riley, or The Burner as the locals not so fondly call her, is a genetically altered employee of Pac At, who works to ensure the safe return of cargo taken from their trucks. These trucks are used to haul goods in and out of the city and are prime targets of pirates of the badlands. She and her beloved truck, Beast, are rightfully feared in the badlands due to her reputation. Riley’s life changes when things take an unexpected turn when her cargo ends up being two humans, both similarly genetically altered, and one missing, leaving a trail of death in her wake.

From the point of view of Riley, we get a good character building of Riley and to some degree our secondary characters, Omega and Ma Rickets. Riley certainly starts as a character who shoots first and asks questions later and has some serious confidence that comes off as braggy at times -- but I cannot blame her as she has the skill and know-how to back it up. As the book progresses, you see a shift in Riley’s mindset and she begins questioning the company who (literally) made her who she is.

I think my main concern with The First Omega that is really holding me back is the length. It seemed that O’Keefe did not have enough time to fully flesh out ideas in the plot, aspects of the world-building, and development of all major characters. We learn about the main characters who are all living in the badlands, but we do not entirely understand why they live there instead of the city; is it because they are forced to live there? Is it a choice they made? What happened to the United States to cause it to become this Mad Max wasteland? What does the company Pac At even do? What is its cargo?

As you can see I have many questions, which one might argue are not even in the purview of the book. The First Omega is about how Riley deals with the job-gone-wrong and her attempts to end the cycle of people like Riley and their role within Pac-At. Perhaps that is all a reader needs to know to understand the book. Perhaps, like the badlands along six-six, this story is only isolated within a larger unknown framework. For me, it caused frustration at the unanswered questions I had. To fully enjoy a book, I want a story more grounded in a defined world. The ideas and plot of The First Omega were entertaining and well thought out. The plot-driven tunnel-vision of the narration, however, had a lot of opportunities to create a more richly carved out world, which were thrown by the wayside.

I’m always up for a good old-fashioned badlands dystopian. But The First Omega spices things up by adding superpowers, futuristic weaponry, in a beautifully realized Mad Max type world. The result is a short book I feel like I haven’t read a thousand times already – and a decent one at that. And while it does suffer from some frustrating character choices that left them feeling flat, it’s nevertheless a fun way to spend 2 hours or less.
Full review to come in an upcoming YouTube video.

I discovered Megan O’Keefe through the first two novels in her Protectorate space opera series, so once I saw the notice for this post-apocalyptic novella that promised a Mad Max-like setting, I had no doubt that I would sample the author’s change of narrative tone: brief as it was, it turned out to be a very intriguing read, and my hope is that Ms. O’Keefe might decide to expand this small seed into a full-length novel, one of these days.

Climate change, or some other upheaval, transformed the face of the Earth, and what once was habitable land has turned into a deserted waste, crossed only by the automatic trucks that carry goods and supplies over the old Route 66, that still connects the East and West coast of the United States. Pirates, or desperate people (it would be hard to set the difference in this time and place) constantly try to steal from these trucks, so the corporation running them, Pac At, set up a sort of policing system through bounty hunters: Riley is one of them, her territory in the arid west, toward the end of the line.

Riley is not her name, she has forgotten it and uses it only because the cranky Ma Rickets calls her thus, for no reason she can understand. To everyone else, especially the desperate people trying to eke out a meagre living in the desert, she is Burner, because that’s what her touch does to you if - or rather when - she catches you. On her latest assignment, however, Riley is surprised to find the attackers already dead, their bodies decomposing although a very short time elapsed since the assault, and in the truck only one living person: a young girl with too-bright eyes that look uncannily like Riley’s own eyes. Her name is Omega…

Given the shortness of this novella I would not feel comfortable sharing any more details, for fear of revealing too much. What I can offer is that this is a story focused on identity and growth, of conditioning that goes beyond its intended programming and the meaning of justice when lawlessness is the only rule in no-man’s land. The few (too few…) pages of this story manage to flesh out Riley’s character in a very interesting way, and to reach moments of poignancy I would not have expected from such a harsh, unforgiving setting and merciless environment.

The narrative style is quite different from what I was used to in O’Keefe’s Protectorate series: like the desert where it’s set, it’s a bleak, stark prose that paints Riley with a sharp and cutting economy of words that leave no room for kindness and yet highlight a character of surprising depth and humanity, one that simply begs to be explored with more detail and more backstory. Hopefully one of these days the author will come back to this world and give us more…

The First Omega is a recently released novella by Megan E. O'Keefe, author of Velocity Weapon. The novella came out honestly with little fanfare, but O'Keefe's space opera trilogy so far has been intriguing, if kind of a bit too overambitious with its epic scope, so I was interested in seeing what she would do with the shorter format of the novella.

The answer is apparently a fairly type post-apoc SciFi western featuring an augmented (cyborg/modified) woman protecting convoys for a powerful corporation, starting to make her own mind up about how things should go, and being confronted by a choice of how to move forward. It's a fun novella that doesn't outstay its welcome and has some interesting themes, but isn't particularly deep either. So yeah worth a pickup even if it's not anything award worthy.



Quick Plot Summary: She doesn't really have a name anymore, although others have given her one. For she is the terror of the wastelands, the one that cannot be stopped, and will absolutely kill you if you steal from the ghost trucks that her supplier, Pac-At, sends to travel the wastelands to the civilized parts of the world.

But when she arrives at her most recent call, she finds the unexpected: a ghost truck knocked over, with all its attackers seemingly dead, and the only thing left of its cargo is a girl. A girl named Omega, who feels the land just like she does, who clearly is just as inhuman as she is, and might just well be her own replacement. But Omega isn't the one who killed the attackers - that was another girl, one who doesn't belong to the land like she and Omega, and who threatens to overturn the status quo if she isn't stopped.......

Thoughts: The First Omega's setup is pretty classic sci-fi post apoc western, you have a desert-like land, you have gangs that roam around trying to take on supply lines (trucks in this case instead of trains), you have the insidious corporation behind it all....you even have the friendly diner owner who is the unnamed protagonist's only friend. But it's very well written, so that you will become a bit emotionally invested in all the characters as the plot is revealed, and realize how they came to be this way - in particular the protagonist and Omega. It all winds up to an ending which is kind of but kind of isn't hopeful, and one which promises things will keep going on this way until they don't, which again works pretty well. There's nothing particularly new here - the anti-corporate theme is pretty classic for this genre, the narration is pretty usual, etc. - but well, its done well, and sometimes that's enough.

I was provided a copy of this book by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This in no way influences my opinion.

It doesn't matter what you call her. Riley. Burner. She forgot her name long ago. But if you steal from the supply lines crossing the wasteland, her face is the last one you'll see. She is the force of nature that keeps the balance in the hot arid desert. Keep to yourself and she'll leave you well enough alone. But it's when you try to take more than you can chew that her employers notice and send her off to restore the balance. Then she gets the latest call. A supply truck knocked over too cleanly. Too precise. And the bodies scattering the wreckage weren't killed by her normal prey of scavengers. These bodies are already rotting hours after the attack. Cowering in the corner of the wreckage is a young girl. A girl that shouldn't be there. A girl with violently blue eyes. Just like hers.

When I got the chance to read this, I jumped on it after having read Velocity Weapon and enjoying that one as I did. In The First Omega you get the wonderful prose of Megan E. O’Keefe, but in a gritty dystopian story instead of a space opera.
The setting for this book is in the wastelands along the rail lines for Pac At’s transport cars, Riley is a Pac At operative tasked with recovering and good that have been stolen by the pirates along the line. She is so efficient at that the pirates are scared to death of her, but still do hit the cars causing the cycle to continue. Then she recovers another operative from a car that was hit and finally learns everything that she has never been told.
Though this is a short book it is a lot of fun to read. Riley the main character is an operative that is just doing what she must do to complete her missions. I liked the way this character was done, you get to see a lot in to her motivations and feelings towards what she must do and how she changes as she learns more of the truth of what is going on.
The world building is wonderful set in a Mad Max style wasteland where people are scraping by the best way they can. There is also the unexplained city at the end of the line where the goods are being transported to and from that made it seem like there is just certain areas that have been made wastelands and that there are still some thriving areas.
I really enjoyed this novella and look forward to more stories from this talented author.

The First Omega is a new, stand-alone novella from the author of (most recently) the acclaimed Protectorate sci-fi series. When it was first announced, the description that this was like “Mad Max meets X-Men” caught my attention. A bleak picture of a blasted future, one with a Western feel, it is a story of nature-vs-nurture, and how to face obsolescence. I rather enjoyed it.

Riley is a hunter. Sent to the hot, arid wilderness to protect the property of Pac-At — supplies and other materials shipped across the blasted countryside, often the targets of pirates and others desperate for supplies to help them eke out a meagre existence. Riley’s been doing this for a while, she’s acquired a deadly reputation. She has also become rather attached to the place and the few connections she’s made with certain “pillars” of the community. Called out to investigate a crash, she finds amongst the wreckage a young girl who seems to be very like herself.

What follows is an intriguing novella about nurture-vs.-nature. Riley loves the land she operates on, she feels a connection to it that is more powerful than expected. Despite her violent purpose, she nevertheless has developed nuanced sense of justice more suited to the environment. As the novella progresses, we learn more about her past and purpose. Naturally, given the short length of the book, it is rather tricky to dive too deeply into the details without spoiling things for new readers. (Which is a shame, as I have many thoughts about the conclusion of the story, and Riley’s fate.)

Despite being a novella, we come to know Riley rather well, and I enjoyed this glimpse of this future that O’Keefe has created (not that I’d want to live in it). The action scenes are well-written and not over-done, and there are plenty of interesting character moments that flesh out Riley and also various supporting cast members. O’Keefe has a real knack for bringing the locations to life, and the level of description is just right — enough for us to paint a picture in our imaginations, but not so detailed as to get in the way of the story. It would certainly be interesting to read more stories in this setting.

If you’re after a quick, enjoyable read, then I would certainly recommend you give The First Omega a try. If you’re already a fan of O’Keefe’s work, then you’ll no doubt have picked this up already. If you’re new the author’s work, then this is a pretty cool place to start.

People live a hardscrabble existence in O’Keefe’s dystopian Southwest. They get what they can out of the arid soil, and some even try to take advantage of the high-speed rail that runs through. Pac-At’s rail trucks carry everything across the continent from weapons to flour, but you have to look out for the bull… Riley, as she’s known to some and The Burner, as she’s calls in the darkness of night, protects the shipment, retrieves it if stolen, and takes out any thieves. She’s a complete badass and that fighting style… What fun to read!

A call comes and Riley dashes through the desert in her electronic destruction-delivery vehicle called the Beast to find a ghost car thrown off the tracks with a mysterious piece of cargo left behind… A young woman named Omega. Riley’s simple life is about to be disrupted… There are things that point towards corporate interference, but questions abound. Who is this girl and why is looking at her like looking into a mirror for Riley? Those bright blue eyes… It would be easy to assume that Omega too has certain augmentations…

At just under 100 pages, The First Omega builds and builds with O’Keef’s wonderful phrases. I could highlight multiple passages on every page, which is exactly what I remember from my time with her novel Velocity Weapon. And the secondary characters where definitely a plus… Ma Ricketts, the gritty proprietor of the local diner and Ratta, the leader of the desert clan. All have a role to play in this immersive setting.

But there is one character who isn’t fleshed out as much as I would have liked… That is Riley’s opposite, the villain Alpha. The book is told in first person from Riley’s POV and most of the characterization of Alpha is explained or told through her eyes. I needed her on-page more… I wanted to see and experience her action and her power. There are only a couple short scenes with her in it, but she is much more pivotal to the plot than those few pages.

Overall, The First Omega is good short story with a compelling speculative premise. It’s not perfect, but I was happy to read it through in one sitting.

3.5 out of 5 stars.

Thank you to NetGalley, Orbit Books, and the author for an advanced copy for review.