Review - Human Omega: Discovered on the Slave Planet by Eileen Glass

Carter is a space marine on his first assignment after finishing boot camp. The station he's assigned to is attacked by an insectoid race of scavengers who capture Carter and take him to a world where he is held as a slave. Carter is put in a cage with two other giant aliens. They are natives of the planet and appear to be a cross between a cat and a porcupine. The two are also very friendly. Very, very friendly. The aliens are very protective of Carter, and seem to want to be affectionate as well, but with no means to communicate, Carter doesn't know their motives.

Don't let the title of this book fool you. While Carter is thought of as an “omega” by his two cage mates, this story feels well outside the typical omega-verse plot line. It uses the omega concept to set up a situation where the aliens make assumptions about Carter, which drastically affects the way they treat him. It's a bit of a shortcut to getting the characters bound together in a short amount of time.

The narration alternates between the three captives in each chapter, so we learn a lot about what they think about each other. Each of the three is a very unique individual. The natives are from a culture that didn't have advanced technology or even know about space flight until the insectoids invaded. The youngest, although largest, of the pair is Pykh. He was apparently born into captivity and knows almost nothing of his own culture, but he does have a basic understanding of the invader's language. Siel is much older than Pykh and was a warrior until he was captured.

This is the start of a series that now runs to four books, all of which follow our three heroes on their adventure. It will be interesting to see how the three overcome their challenges, not least of which is the inability to communicate.

“Human Omega: Discovered on the Slave Planet” is available from Amazon (commissionable link).