Top positive review
4.0 out of 5 starsAn omegaverse story I actually liked.
Reviewed in the United States on September 9, 2021
Var is book 1 in a new collaborative series, The Omega Collective, by Mina Carter and Susan Hayes, and it is an 'omegaverse' style story. The book is written in third person omniscient from both leads' perspectives.
To be fair, I'm not huge on the omegaverse genre, but I did enjoy the book, so hats off to the ladies for managing that. The book takes place in the wake of the hostile takeover of earth by an alien species (Tolath) whose purpose is to use human females for breeding, since they don't have enough of their own (some weird genetic quirk). One faction of the Tolath did the initial invasion, but they then proceeded to abuse their new subjects, so a different faction has come and is finishing up the process of kicking them out (read that as killing them off). So this new group is at least not the monsters of the old regime, but the humans don't know that. What the Tolath don't know, is that their genetic tinkering failed to make humans docile like it has for previous species. This series will be about the two species learning to live with one another, because at this point, neither has a choice.
Var was probably a good starting character, honestly. He wasn't royalty or nobility, so it was easier to get to know both him and his species through him than it would have been if they had started the series with, say, the overseer. I actually ended up liking him a good bit by the end of the book. Leia was a mom desperate to save her daughter, and brave enough to literally anything to succeed. I think making her an older woman probably helped start the series too, because she had some wisdom to go with her drive and it served to educate the Tolath.
This book is full of hulking alien warriors, fearsome human females, lots of action, a good heaping of steam, and some eye opening moments for some rather surprised males. A good read that won't take you long and will make you curious about the next book.
