Review: The Forever Ship (Starship Omega Book 1)
Writer duo Scott Bartlett and Joshua James bring us to a future where humans are under
the rule of the Imperium, an empire ruled by tyrannical snake aliens called the Ornu. We follow
Bill Henderson and his crew, who are soldiers for the Imperium. While on a mission, they
received a primeval transmission. As they investigate this transmission, they are led to a ship
called the Omega. A ship that was constructed in the distant past by an alien race. The ship
appears to be alive, and it takes a liking to the humans and wants to help them liberate
themselves from the Ornu. Bill and his crew ally with other alien races to extract the humans on
Earth from their snake overlords.
The book expresses the themes of betrayal and sacrifice. How far will you go to save
your species? Where does your loyalty lie? Will your past mistakes come back to haunt you?
This book does an excellent job of easing you into this greater world with all the other complex,
well-written characters. This book is very comprehensive, but it is never boring. The fights that
expanded multiple chapters were a personal favorite. World-building is tricky when writing a
novel. Even as someone who enjoys shorter novels, I never felt overwhelmed listening to this
novel.
As a bonus, the book has two novellas called Heart of Virtue and The Immineo Incident.
The Heart of Virtue is a prequel to the Forever Ship. We get further back story about the main
characters and how they became the characters we see in the Forever Ship. You get a further
understanding of why some of the characters made the decisions that they did. It gives you a
chance to rethink your opinion on some of the characters. This novella also expands upon
scenes that were only briefly mentioned in the main story. The Immineo incident is a side story
where we follow Al and his group, who are given the mission to save the daughter of a high-
ranking Ornu official. The final chapter is called the State of the Galaxy Report where we get
more details of the aliens encountered in this book.
I decided to listen to the Audible version of this book narrated by Mark Boyett. Mark is a
talented narrator as he breathed life into these characters, giving them their unique voices. This
18-hour audio book is a long story to get through, so I wouldn’t recommend listening to or
reading it all at once. This is not a book that you would be able to read in a couple of days or a
week. The Forever Ship and it’s novellas are stories that you would want to pace yourself with.
Give yourself a month to fully enjoy it and become invested in it.
The Forever Ship (Starship Omega Book 1) is currently available on Amazon. Be sure to read it
before the sequel, Eternity’s Battleship (Starship Omega Book 2) comes out on April 24, 2025.
