SciFi Novella Review: The First Omega by Megan E. O'Keefe

 
Disclaimer:  This novella was read as an e-ARC provided by the publisher in exchange for a review.  I promise that this did not affect my review in any way.  

The First Omega by Megan E. O. Keefe

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.