Omega Squad

A Superhero Adventure (Omega Metahumans, Book 1)

By: Kurtis Eckstein

Narrated by: Will M. Watt, Katherine Littrell, Jeff Hays, Aurelia Vazquez

Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins

Publisher's Summary

Jacob Knight wakes up to a bloodbath at the mall, with him at the epicenter. He is quickly arrested and forced to fight on a secret squad of metahumans who are given a choice between forced military service or prison. 

The problem is, he has no idea what his ability is, and no one will give him a straight answer. But one thing is clear: he needs to figure it out, and fast, since the success of his first mission hinges on him.

Prologue 

I heard her scream again, yelling as loud as she could muster, but it was lost in the fire this time, unable to penetrate the heat. I think she ordered him to stop. We both ignored her anyway, just staring at each other through the white energy pouring out of his body. It was like a powerful storm of pure thermal plasma raging out of him, like shaking hands with the center of a super nova. 

He wasn’t angry. If anything, he was a little surprised, but there was something else there too. 

Respect. 

He was a monster who could survive an ungodly amount of heat, who could live in the flames. And I was equally a monster, who could stand in the flames with him. Something no one else could do. Something he could respect.

©2018 Kurtis Eckstein (P)2019 Kurtis Eckstein

Terrible form of teenage power fantasy.

I was determined to finish this book because I was hoping so much that the ending would wrap things up nicely and that it would have made the adolescent trash that was the earlier parts of the book worth it. Oh, how I was so disappointed.

As always, I had listened to the audiobook. Soundbooth tries their best as always and I really do enjoy their other works. The narration was OKAY, it wasn't great but that was probably due to the source material.

Spoilers below.

Now, the source material. This is pure teenage power wish fulfillment at its worst. I am not usually one to judge against it, that sub-genre is usually a guilty pleasure of mine when it comes to short books. But this one, oh man, this one. The characters are boring, all of them. Because this is sort of an edgy-er X-men, it relies on the characters to be interesting to make it a good book. This all falls flat when the characters never develop. This problem is compounded by the fact that the only thing good about the book is that it does build some intrigue about who is the overarching villain in all this, but it leads up to nothing there is no true villain character. They only hint at an evil group at the end of the book but with no details. Until then, they simply exist and it is boring. There are events, but they all come out the same. The main character just being the main character. I have never facepalmed/eye-rolled so many times while listening to a book before. This is a teenage power fantasy that does not know how to make itself believable. The writing demonstrates a teenage level knowledge of the world and also shows a limited knowledge about actual character dynamics. Overall this gets a solid 2/5.

Ranting section: The main character is such a mary sue it hurts. The main female supporting just straight falls in love with him "because he would die for her". Each of the supporting cast contributes almost NOTHING and then they introduce a loli character that is dependent on the main character thus queuing up the teenage harem fantasy. The code names given to them by the "military" are absolute trash and only add to the absurdity of the entire situation. It is written in the first person. The main character's thought processes are that of an adolescent fool whose vision is as narrow as when you use binoculars on an object 2 feet in front of you.

the soundeffects were annoying

The story and overall performance were good but the sound effects were really bad. The music that started playing was to loud sometimes so it was hard to hear what he was saying. And most of the soundeffects didn´t add anything to the performance of the audiobook most of it was just annoying and didn´t fit that good to the situations and the music overall was a bad choise of music imo. This did not ruin the audiobook tought since the narrators did a pretty good job and I will get the next book in the series.

this is a dumpster fire

The main character is a sociopath as he literally finds out that he may have killed his girlfriend then immediately after hes flirting with some strange woman.
The false build up of what his powers is stupid. no military or merc unit is going to send untested agents into the feild and now he suddenly can sense what other peoples powers are with no hint of him having that power at all. This needed an editor to slap the author in the face and tell him he needed like 5 more chapters in the beginning of character development, maybe not switch between shy and overly sexually aggressive within I kick you not 20 minutes tops from the characters perspective and to stop writing this like a bad fan fic of the suicide squad movie(not even the comic the already bad movie).
I wanted to like it cause I somewhat enjoyed this life of immortal book, and I usually like anything Jeff Hays is in cause he seems to have good taste in his narration picks, but this is just a bad.

Pretty good

Looks like the only other review right now is by someone who gives almost exclusively one star reviews for everything. Objectively, this book is a good listen with excellent narrators and a solid plot. This writer deserves some respect.

Not good

The story is subpar and the main narrator is using the most annoying accent I’ve ever heard.

So good!

Soundbooth did an amazing job with bringing this story to life, while I'm not sure about the seemly random music clips in the background, on the whole the voice work and minor use of sound effects was spectacular ! couple that with this evolving story line that only draws you in more and more as it continues, its a fun ride, I'm looking forward to the next one!

I feel betrayed

TLDR, don’t buy this book
This book is a mystery wrapped in an enigma, and not in a fun way. To be honest, I found the book through searching for books narrated by Jeff Hays. Not many people enjoy his voice, and I’ll admit, it takes some getting used to, but overall he is a pretty versatile narrator. Seeing that there were multiple narrators, I became really excited. I got a sort of radio drama vibe when I heard the book’s sample.
The first 10-15 minutes were probably the most believable and immersive I felt a story could get for what I was listening to. It was extremely short lived. I find it disturbing not only the quick shift of the main character’s mindset, but the way the book feels off.
I’ll admit, I thought that some of the powers were pretty cool, though some were poorly explained, but to go from the prologue, which feels intense and captivating to some middle/high school kids wet dream threw me for a loop.
As an aside, I truly disliked the overall tone of the book as a whole. The setting doesn’t make sense, the plot feels like something that was written by someone on their first try, and the fact that the exposition, characters and conflict are widely unbelievable is pathetic and lousy on the authors part.
I truly wanted this book to be good, and I feel betrayed by the author not only twisting the knife, but salting the wound as well. Kurtis Eckstein should find a different occupation, because writing books is most definitely not his forte. I just feel bad that I forced myself to listen to the whole thing.

Yikes

There is a lot to unpack here. I find it odd that they went with a narrator that naturally has a strong British accent who narrates with an American accent. The whole time it sounds like he is trying too hard not to have a British accent. And the narrator who does the 12 year old girl gives her a squeaky little voice of a 6 year old, not a freshman in high school. Then there's the story. How does a 17 yr old go from normal kid who has no idea what's going on to scheming a coup in some secret military group in 3 days? And how does he go from mourning his old gf he may have killed to being madly in love with someone else literally 24 hours later? AND the author clearly takes huge chunks of another book he wrote and just copies them into this one. Same powers, same plot points. WTF. Bush lesgue.

Avoid at All Cost!

A military setting written by someone with no understanding of the military, chapter after chapter of cringe-worthy dialog, and characters that can only aspire to be "two-dimensional."

The whole piece reads like a high schooler's first-person, 'Suicide Squad' fan-fic and only serves to remind why editors exist.

Its only saving grace is a top-notch audio performance and frankly I don't see how they made it all the way through. I certainly couldn't.

As a side note, I find it really disheartening how many five-star "rave" reviews there are for this title.

Teenage whinebag

I barely got through the first hour. The book is nothing but a teenage boy whining. He has no balls and allows everyone to just run over him except the girl he just all of a sudden is completely smitten with. Stupid drivel. Complete waste of a credit.

an interesting concept that's ruined by characters

I'll admit I came in expecting more when reading the synopsis and that is my fault alone.

The story takes place in an alternative reality similar to ours. The only difference is there are people with super powers and for some reason (which isn't explained) the public doesn't know about. The government takes dangerous criminals that have these super powers and forces them to fight against other super humans. Which alone is an interesting concept, a "suicide squad" like story, except they're quietly taking out the bad guys without the public knowing.

the only problem is the characters.

Let's start off with Jacob Knight, the protagonist. I won't spoil his abilities but let's just say his powers are like superman but without the weaknesses. Which makes him very overpowered and admittedly a very boring character. You can disagree with me but I personally find a story boring if I know he's going to win a fight because "IM OVERPOWERED AS F***." There's also the fact that right at the start something I'd consider as emotionally upsetting to him happens and it takes nearly halfway through the book before he has any real reaction to it. without spoiling anything else about the story I can also say that he hates being called Jacob and prefers Jake, but it's never stated as far as I'm aware.

next is Trinity. The heroine of the story. Again trying not to spoil the story, she's constantly written as an emotionless character before meeting Jake, but literally meeting Jake on chapter 1 she's written as a bubbly and flirtatious character. by day two she's madly in love with Jake. I could probably get it if Trinity needed an emotional anchor or something like that as another character that arrives about halfway through the book, which brings to the other characters.

apart from another character I won't spoil. the other characters are fairly 2D in character development.

Ava is the strong silent type character.

Zane is the competitive asshole of the group.

and the last character (which I won't try and write his name because I know I won't spell it right) could be considered as the veteran of the group.

there is character development between these three but it's not an awful lot and upsetting since some of these characters are somewhat interesting.

Omega squad review: Albert Anness

A very captivating and well thought out story. I've been interested in superhero stories for a long time now and this one certainly stands out its like a mix between the X-Men and the SCP foundation. The effects and performers were all very good and felt real which added a nice tour and sent shivers up my spine. The story and characters were all very well thought out with plot twist after plot twist for who the bad guy is to how our protagonist got to where he is and gives good insight into the characters me minds and displays that message of not always trusting law and looking out for others, even if some of the characters are rather morally questionable. Characters such as Trinity, she first comes across as this merciless, self centred, psychopath but she is actually a very caring person who went through a lot she kind of reminds me of a mix between Black Widow and Harley Quinn. Characters too like Jake, he shows despite the twisted environment he is caught in he still retains his moral conscience and fights for justice. Overall I really enjoyed this story and would highly recommend it to anyone interested particularly in the superhero genre.

Don't even bother reading!!!

I really like Kurtis Ecksteins books but i have only gotten to 9 mins of this one and had to give up.
The Reason is the stupid sound effects that even an anime producer wouldn't dare use, not only are they a distraction but it is literally making me angry listening to the stupid effects.
BOOKS DON'T HAVE SOUND EFFECTS so i'm going to get get my credit back and hope they do a version without the sound effects.