2. Omega

By: Jack McDevitt

Omega, The fourth book in Mc Devitt's  Academy series seems to establish a similar trend to the Star Trek movies.  Unless you're a die hard trekker, you can pretty much skip the odd numbered films, right?  Well, unless you're a hard-core-'Acadamite'- you can probably skip the even numbered books. 

Omega picks up the story that was basically dropped in The Engines of God regarding the mysterious Omega clouds (I won't say any more than that for those of you haven't picked up the excellent EoG yet.   

Unfortunately, in we only learn a little bit more about the clouds in this book, as the majority of it is about saving a muppet-like alien race from extinction.  More unfortunately, the most important new revelation about the Omegas in this book doesn't appear until a (sort of) twist ending.  That being said, a quick glance at the back cover of book five Odyssey, shows that it looks like McDevitt is dropping that story line, at least until book six (which apparently is recently available in hardcover).  

The series is still good enough to go on, but I'm hoping that  we get back to stories of archeology of long gone alien races. It tends to be more interesting than the anthropology of muppets. 

Recommendation: If you've read Engines of God and Chindi, and hopefully skipped Deepsix, find a copy of Omega and read the last chapter to find out a little more about the Omegas.  There. You're up to date.