Really wanted to love this book but I think it just aimed for weird and got incoherent instead.

I loved the dystopion feel and the way that schools were owned by brands and were basically adverts and how everything was streamlined. I wish we had learnt more about how this worked and the different brands and different schools.

I wish we had also learnt more about the world as a whole and how everything connected.

If you are going to create a whole new world and have so many varied ideas...they need to be properly explained and introduced to the audience properly. Ernest Cline did this in a breathtaking way in Ready Player One but this is where Alpha Omega failed for me.

Lots of terms were thrown at the reader like Alpha Omega, Nutristart, Meninist, Masculist etc but absolutely none of them were explained. For any kind of enjoyment for this I think we needed some basic introduction and if the writing style choses to throw us in at the deep end (which I can usually get on board with) then this needs to be unraveled gradually and with a sense of satisfaction. Neither happened here. Information was thrown at us and the reader either understood it or didn't but nothing was actually explained.

I love dystopian fantasies and have read so many amazing ones but this one set the world up and it seemed futuristic and horrible and interesting but then the authors didn't explain it to us at all. There was so much here that was interesting but nothing that helped to make it real and I was very disappointed with that. There was so much time describing to us like the characters of Tooley and Barren..but why? What did those descriptions ultimately lead too? And where did that fit in?

Am I being hard on this book? Absolutely and I apologise...but the reason why...is because this book had so much potential and could easily have been up there with the great dystopian thrillers had it done any sustained world building or explanation at all.

As it was we were rushed from one weird scenario to another...none of which made any cohesive story or any sense at all.

The ending was so disappointing and ended so abruptly that I actually read back and forward a few times to ensure I had actually got the last few chapters.

Gabriel was also such a vile character that I nearly couldn't bear to read his thoughts...but I did in the hope that this would lead to some understanding or revelation of where all of this was leading....but unfortunately I did not feel rewarded by the end

There were some very clever ideas here but unfortunately nothing that made it into an actual engaging story...maybe a short story would have worked better here?

Maybe I just didn't 'get' it and if I didn't then I'm happy to hold my hands up to that...but then...I've never had this problem before...so if I did here then that also speaks volumes or maybe I am just the wrong audience entirely but again that raises questions as to why am I?

Thanks to the authors,publisher and Netgalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I really wanted to love this book... The blurb intrigued me and the reviews likening it to Black Mirror persuaded me to request it. Although a YA book, the dark humour and satire were amusing and appreciated. Unfortunately, I wasn’t gripped and I didn’t really care what happened to the characters. I’m not a massive fan of VR so perhaps this is why I lost interest and just skim-read the last third of the book.

Don’t let me put you off though! The other positive reviews sum the book up perfectly and if this is up your street, it’s very well written! Just not for me.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the ARC :)

Stranger Things meets Black Mirror and Ready Player One - well I have only seen one episode of Black Mirror and that was the one with the freaky robotic killer dogs, there wasn’t any of them in the book that I could see, so I’m thinking Stranger Things meets Ready Player One meets Grange Hill. That reference might be lost on my readers who don’t live in the UK - Google it, you are in for a treat.

Anyway I digress, Alpha Omega is a satirical look at a world gone mad, set in our near future, kids are attached to electronic learning pads, tech companies are taking over and people are telling us what to eat - actually that sounds exactly like 2020, but imagine it ten times more sinister.

The book is told from the POV of several different characters, Tom the disenchanted teacher, Alice the archaeologist, Gabriel the expelled student and avid gamer, his blind mother Stephanie and Alex a young boy whose sinister discovery kickstarts the book. The setting is split between the real world and the world of Alpha Omega an online universe where you can do anything accessed with VR headsets.

Alex and his pals attended the Nutri Start Skills Academy, a school where literally everything is monitored by their pads and cameras watch their every move. Alex manages to evade them and explore a building site where he discovers some rather grisly objects - a skull and two skeletal hands, being a boy he doesn’t leave them behind, he shoves them in his backpack and sneaks back to school. Things start to go rapidly downhill, are the bones cursed somehow?

Kids start to bleed profusely from their noses, their ears, Tom the kindly teacher is worried, more so when the creepy headteacher doesn’t really seem to care and escorts the children off the premises. He has every right to be worried as more and more kids start pouring with blood, acting strangely and eating things they definitely should not be eating, the school is hiding something and when an ill organised security update goes badly wrong the school descends in to bloody chaos.

Whilst this is happening Gabriel who was expelled from Nutri Start is lured in to working for Alpha Omega, his version of the online universe bends and shapes itself to his every sick wish, but he quickly tires of being a hamster in the Nutri Start wheel and questions his paymasters motives.

Our protagonists find their lives intertwined and they slowly come together to try and find out what the hell is happening at the school, the book is not merely a science fiction explosion its also a bit of detective story too as our cast of characters delve in to the murky underworld of Nutri Start and Alpha Omega.

Just reading this back, the book sounds bonkers but it is bonkers fun, it does not take itself too seriously and there is a definite Britishness about it. It brings together a great cast of characters and they all play a vital role. The book is scary too, is this type of future coming closer to us? Most likely but hopefully with out all the blood and craziness!

Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review.

I saw this described as Ready Player One meets Black Mirror, and actually, this is an incredibly apt description, and probably the best way of describing the vibe you get from this book.

So you follow a few point of views. You have Gabriel, who has been expelled from the school and is the ‘gamer’ of the book. Essentially he spends most of the book in the VR world and while he does interact a tiny bit with the main story, he ultimately has his own plot that runs parallel to the main plot. I’m not entirely sure how it intersects and I kind of wish he had more of an impact on the main plot, as the blurb seems to hint that he is super involved with the plot in the ‘real world’. And also, he’s pegged as the central character whereas I saw him as more of a supporting character.

There is who I think of as the main character and that is Tom, a teacher at the school. He is the one who begins to piece together the plot and who brings various other characters together. So, I think the story more focusses on him and his interactions with the school and the main plot.

This book is freaky. You can completely see how this could be a world in which we live. Schools and neighbourhoods run by sponsorships, tablets replacing pen and paper, and a VR world that almost everyone is a part of. It’s a fascinating thing to read as you can see this happening, and it’s a little close to home.

The author doesn’t hold your hand during the plot. You have to piece together quite a lot of it and it took me until the next day to really figure out the ending. But it’s one of those great books where you have a revelation about it a few days after you’re finished, because it sticks with you. Yes, you’ll have to work a bit hard to put two and two together and to work out what exactly is going on. But, if this sounds like your kind of book it’s 100% worth reading.

If you read enough Near Future fiction you will start to see a trend. The future is not orange at all but bleak and a little depressing. It could be giant robots, aliens or the undead. There always seems to be something around the corner that is more dystopian than utopian. I can take all the UFOs and flesh-eating shamblers you can throw at me. The worst futures are those that are scarily familiar. A future of corporations integrating themselves with schools and people spending more time online than in the real world. Alpha Omega by Nicholas Bowling feels likes the dystopia we may all be heading towards.

When Alex Pepys finds some skull and bones on the grounds of his school, he does not tell the teachers, but instead takes them to his locker. Where are these bones from? Is it an antient Druid burial ground that Peepsy has disturbed? It does feel like a curse could be on the NutriStart Skills Academy as some of the kids are getting sick and not just with the sniffles. Small Paul has escaped into the ventilation system and keeps biting people. Where does the problem lie? In the school, the burial ground, or perhaps online in the Alpha Omega?

I have read a lot of science fiction in my time and Alpha Omega has some of the most disturbing elements because it cuts so close to the bone. Bowling is a teacher and he uses his experience of the present to extrapolate a future that could happen. Children are dictated with what role they will play in society at a young age by tests. They are then put in sponsored schools so that they end up in that company. All their actions are tracked on personal PADs, thier food regime dictated by performance. The only escape is online in a world called Alpha Omega were even the nicest people seem to lose themselves in deviancy. Sound familiar? The world of Alpha Omega is not so far removed from our own.

There are fantastical elements that are less grounded. A disease is spreading through the school and turning some children feral. The horror is not found in this but how people react to it. The Senior Management Team seem to be ignoring it, sending out placating Newsletters to Staff and Parents. The other children are kept in the dark and the teachers don’t seem to care. Life is a cheap commodity in this version of the future.

Bowling has created a nuanced and dark world. There are so many layers to it that he slowly reveals as the book expands. Although mostly set in a school and online, you learn so much about the society. There is an obvious hierarchy as the support staff appear to be mute and sleep in the bowels of the building. A slick future is built on poor foundations so when things go wrong there is nothing to hold it up.

Alpha Omega is an ensemble book that follows several characters and their stories interweave. Bowling has a good balance of characters; old, young, working in the school and those who are from without. You get a rounded impression of events and you soon discover that the book is not only science fiction but a crime story. Who is behind the mysterious illness?

Although grim, there is a sense of dark amusement in the book. A lot of the people seem a little sad and their lives depressing. The fact that they live something that is a continuation of modern life here is grim, but also done with humour. I don’t see us all living like Alpha Omega in future, but I do see trends in this book. Bowling uses science fiction to play with our current obsession with technology and some people’s drive to get the best out of their children, no matter the cost. With its intelligent and wry look and the future, Alpha Omega is a book that will stay with me for a long time.

Brilliant book. As soon as I saw this on NetGalley I was intrigued. When I saw that the publisher was Titan Books I was set on it.

It was full of action and kind of spooky, especially with the current situation!

I loved that there was a big emphasis on VR games and it gave me major Ready Player One vibes!

I loved the main character, Gabriel, and thought he was really relatable.

I couldn’t put it down, and I certainly won’t forget this story for a long time!

This is one of those books I kept going back on forth on. Even as I start writing this review I can’t decide if it’s a “potentially good book spoiled by….”-style review or a “so good you can forgive…” one. ‘Alpha Omega’ does lots of things really well. It has likeable characters, is very funny at times, and mixes convincing near future science fiction with absolutely biting satire on the direction modern Britain is heading in. What it doesn’t do so well is tell a story.
The books centres on a school, the NutriStart Skills Academy, a secondary school in an England that feels only a few years away. It’s a world where everything is privatised and run by rival corporations and where most of the population is addicted to Alpha Omega, an online virtual world that mixes video gaming and social media. It’s today on steroids and that mix of Britishness, satire and sci fi makes comparisons with ‘Black Mirror’ both obvious and valid. It also reminded me a lot of the original ‘Max Headroom’ TV play from 1985.
The story follows some of the pupils and teachers at the school, the kicking off point being the discovery of ancient bones in the school grounds during the installation of a new security system. Nicholas Bowling uses this set up to cast his eye on a broad and diverse range of topical concerns. The book considers the role of Huawei in the 5G network, the dismantling of the NHS, the challenges to education posed by the academy system, the rise of amateur content creators (and pornographers) and the increasingly central role of new forms of media in our daily lives.
The satire element of the book is quite brilliantly handled. It’s funny and engaging and made me reflect on things without ever feeling heavy handed. The characters are also very well done. Bowling is a teacher by trade and his depiction of both students and educators is convincing. There isn’t a central protagonist, but rather an ensemble cast who work together to try and survive the increasingly bizarre events unfolding around them. Despite that weirdness the people all felt real and that makes the book all the more effective.
As I noted at the start it’s not all good though. I found the story gripping at first, but as time went on (and particularly in the final third) there was so much going on I got a bit lost. The ending also fell a bit flat for me and I finished the book thinking that one more rewrite might have been in order.
Review written, I think I’ve landed on “so good you can forgive…” The book does a lot very, very well, and that’s enough to overcome its problems, significant as they are.

This review will go live at the link below on 15 July:

I’ve been having a ball with my Twenty Books of Summer challenge, out of the eight books I’ve read / listened to so far, there are only 2 that I considered a bit meh, and unfortunately Alpha Omega was one of them.

The blurb got me hook, line and sinker just by mentioning Black Mirror. I always thought I was not a sci-fi fan at all, but that was before I discovered dark near-future science fiction, a subgenre I can’t seem to get enough of. Heather Child and Blake Crouch had me covered last year, and I’d hoped that I’d be able to add Alpha Omega to my list of awesome Black Mirror-esque novels, but alas…

We were off to a great start though! I felt myself gleefully tumbling down the rabbit hole with various storylines blooming before my very eyes: a boy who finds a skull, a girl who gets an extreme nosebleed and is subsequently shipped off to God-knows-where, an archaeologist who is lamenting how little she’s allowed to work out in the real world, a gamer at the top of his game who is confronted “In World” by a faceless man. I was properly intrigued by the story and its setting in this brave new world, and dying to find out how it would all come together.

And then I got lost. My attention wavered. What was supposed to be a quick read at less than 300 pages seemed to drag. I’m not sure what happened. I won’t deny that I have the attention span of a goldfish at times, so it’s entirely possible that it’s me and not this book, but I got confused, I got turned around, I didn’t know what was what anymore, nor what was the point of anything.

While Alpha Omega raises a few valid points and is quite thought-provoking in some aspects, I would have liked it better if there had been more world-building, and if more of my questions had been answered. Instead I feel like I’ve been left in a bit of a muddle with a frown line edged into my brow.

If a mix of Stranger Things, Black Mirror and Ready Player One is music to your ears, then by all means do not let me stop you. Alpha Omega didn’t quite hit the mark for me, but it may work for you.

Alpha Omega is available now as eBook and will be out in paperback on 21 July. Thanks to Titan Books and NetGalley for the eARC. All opinions are my own.

Alpha Omega is a fascinating change of direction for an author who is known for writing historical fiction, with a supernatural twang. I have read both his previous books and am delighted to see Titan releasing a YA novel which is clearly set in a British school (NutriStart Skills Academy, which uses UK terminology and avoids the American mannerisms you often get with this sort of fiction. I love seeing authors doing something different or unpredictable and Nicholas Bowling certainly does that here.

Alpha Omega will be enjoyed by kids aged 12-15 and although it has a little swearing fans of dystiopian, science fiction or thrillers might enjoy it. It is not obviously one genre and although the press kit mentions
M.T. Hill, Blake Crouch and Lauren Beukes, this is a YA novel and does not have the depth of those adult novels and has more in common with Ready Player One, via the use of Virtual Reality (Alpha Omega) technology, which is a core part of the story. Part of its effectively is the fact it is set in a very convincing 'near' future, 95% of things are the same, but the story is built around the 5% which if different, particularly the stuff surrounding the school. I think the author works as a teacher, it shows, because the school scenes are incredibly convincing.

The action opens with the discovery of a human skull on the fringes of the school, children displaying symptoms of a bloody, unfamiliar contagion, and a catastrophic malfunction in the site’s security system, the NSA is about to experience a week that no amount of rebranding can conceal. The story takes in both teachers and pupils as everything escalates and the school spirals out of control, with the AV game being increasingly influential.

Alpha Omega is high function speculative fiction, which has much to say about social media, mental health and the impact of digital technology on teenagers. Well worth checking out. I will certainly be buying it for my library.

I’d never heard of the author before but the plot sounded very intriguing and Titan Books is among my favourite publishers so I was pretty confident I’d have a good time. The comparisons to Stranger Things, Black Mirror and Ready Player One were added bonuses. It also reminded me a lot of Awaken Online: Catharsis. I didn’t want to stop reading one I’d started because I was enjoying myself so much. I’m a bit of an AI / VR phobe so a lot of what happens in the book unsettled and disturbed me because it felt so plausible which made it even more enjoyable to read. This is unsettling but fantastic, the kind of book to get sucked into and one I will think about for weeks. This is a terrific book.

Alpha Omega is a fascinating and immersive read, which is extremely topical given the global covid-19 pandemic, eerily so in parts that it gets a little freaky. Well worth a read.