Dystopian Romance Review: The Sterling Acquisition
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars | Goodreads | Amazon | Bookbub |
Genres: Corporate Horror, Omegaverse, Dystopian Future
Introduction
Dive into a richly developed dystopian romance set in a world full of corporate espionage and steamy omegaverse vibes. Authored by Gale Ian Tate, this dystopian romance tosses readers headfirst into a world where patents and people are hot property. Where there’s systemic oppression of groups of people. Where there is a deep, ground-shaking conspiracy by those in power who will do anything to stay in power.
The Sterling Acquisition delivers everything you didn’t know you wanted. This book has everything: corporate espionage, omegaverse politics, and biologically enhanced romance. All set in a dystopian MM romance that you won’t put down.
Readers pick up the story by meeting Dante Ashford, a veteran and highly skilled corporate operative (read: spy and sabateur) at Gensyn Corporation. His next high-stakes espionage assignment is to infiltrate a rival corporation, Sterling-Vance Industries, to steal cutting-edge technology they’re developing that will force resistant Omegas to bond to their controllers: the Alphas.
But you see, these corporations are more than just corporations as we think of them now. These corporations are the actual government. This book takes place in a dark future world, one that’s been overrun with corporate power. There’s no more separation between business interests and the governance of the people. The company town has gone nationwide. The whole country is divided into corporate power hubs.
People are Assets
One of the most closely guarded assets each corporation controls with complete authority over is an oppressed group of people: Omegas, who are disenfranchised to the highest degree. Dealing with these problematic issues with a deft hand, the Sterling Acquisition explores themes of bodily autonomy, corporate overreach, and the question of what loyalty is and who deserves it, in a surprisingly deep way while still being a high-heat, deliciously tense MM Omegaverse romance.
Steamy and Gloriously Ridiculous
Overall, the Sterling Acquisition is a steamy, gloriously ridiculous read, and I mean that in the best of ways. Fans of A/B/O tropes will love this story. If you enjoy dystopian fiction, you’ll enjoy getting pulled into this chillingly realistic future where alphas dominate, control over autonomy has been commoditized, and personal identity has been smashed into pieces.
Blurb
Gale Ian Tate authors this futuristic corporate horror/dystopian MM romance.
In the Incorporated States of New America, everything has a price—including Dante Ashford’s twenty-year career as Gensyn Corporation’s most reliable operative. His latest assignment promises standard corporate espionage: infiltrate Sterling-Vance Industries, steal their forced bonding technology, and extract before anyone notices the missing patents or bodies.
Enter Leo James, SVI’s answer to the question “what if we gave someone a PhD in missing the point?” His idea of Omega management involves public street wrestling and the kind of psychological incompetence that makes his neighbors place bets on his daily humiliation.
His contracted Omega, Orion, has responded by weaponizing domestic compliance into an art form that’s part rebellion, part seduction, and entirely wasted on someone who thinks dominance means hitting harder. He’s brilliant, gorgeous, completely feral, and about to become the first human guinea pig for technology that will reprogram his mind while making him send thank-you cards afterward.
Dante’s mission parameters definitely didn’t include developing an obsession with saving someone who fights like a wildcat and kisses like he’s trying to start wars. But watching Leo fail at breaking someone who was clearly made to be claimed properly is like witnessing corporate negligence on a personal level.
Now Dante’s racing against experimental timelines, fighting his own conditioning, and learning that some bonds can’t be manufactured in a lab—they have to be earned one stolen moment, heated argument, and desperate encounter at a time.
Some people are worth committing corporate treason for. Even if they bite.
Especially if they bite.
This is a non-shifter A/B/O Omegaverse novel with no MPreg and a guaranteed HEA.
Content Warnings: Explicit sexual content, dubious consent, violence, captivity, human trafficking, medical experimentation, corporate abuse, surveillance, and Alpha/Beta/Omega dynamics with significant power imbalances. Intended for mature readers.
476 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 28, 2025
Genre Mix: Dystopian Corporate Horror.
The Sterling Acquisition is a dark, steamy, and emotionally charged ride that’s got surprising heart and tension. It blends elements from many genres and tropes. Imagine a dystopian future in a world where corporations have taken over the governance of the people, complete with chemical methods of control, and that’s the world in The Sterling Acquisition.
What is Loyalty?
This book will prompt readers to imagine a world where loyalty is sold, emotions are inefficient and unwelcome, and love? Out of the question. Following Dante as he goes from seasoned corporate spy, someone who has been retained to be cold, professional, and detached, to something completely rebellious and operating outside the perimeters of his mission. All because he meets the most unmanageable Omega alive, someone brilliant, wild, and who absolutely refuses to be tamed: Orion.
Suddenly, Dante is bucking against his own conditioning—questioning his loyalty, choosing obsession, choosing risk, choosing connection even when he can’t quite understand why.
World-Building is TOP NOTCH
Holy world-building. I’m obsessed with the world created by Gale Ian Tate. I can’t wait for the next book in the series to tell us more about it. I want to explore all the realities of how corporate power has reshaped society but never want to live there! Futher, I want to see the history of how the United States crumbled, how the corporate powers that govern the areas around the country rose from those ashes. I want a whole story. Gensyn and Sterling Vance Industries are the key corporations that readers learn about in this book, but I imagine we’ll learn about more in subsequent installments.
The world is made of different powers: these corporate powers that have taken the idea of a company town and applied it to society as a whole. Different corporations have various ways of controlling their Omega populations. And no corporations fully trust one another. Enter corporate espionage, because what one corporation has, another wants to steal or sabotage.
Dystopian Romance Plot
The Alpha/Omega Element
How did all of this come about? Sometime in the past, a virus caused humans to develop Alpha/Omega presentation, and that also reshaped society completely. I would imagine humans developing Alpha/Omega presentations was a huge catalyst for the “Unraveling,” as it’s called in the book. At least it would have helped to speed it along.
So, now the world is full of people with these primal desires. Alphas, the more dominant of the dynamics, wrest power from the other designations. Once they are in power, they are going to fight to stay in power. They systematically oppress Omegas; they become, over time, completely subservient in their societal roles. What’s worse is they’re owned. They’re hunted, imprisoned, and their bodily autonomy is completely stripped from them.
The Struggle
The story develops around these struggles, with Dante, an Alpha, one of our MCs, arriving on scene as a corporate spy and getting immediately sucked into the struggles of our other MC, Orion, an Omega who has fought back, violently, from the suppression and imprisonment he’s subjected to by Sterling Vance, known as SVI.
Chaos Ensues
Things do devolve pretty quickly into chaos. Orion is in uncontrolled heat cycles, refusing to submit to Leo, his prison guard/keeper. He has been fighting, lashing out, and escaping on the regular for the past year. But, the whole society is set up so he can’t actually succeed in getting away. And his time is running out.
SVI’s workers are busy perfecting a chemical lobotomy technology to bend Omega’s will to their captors. Orion is set to be Test Subject #1. And this is the technology that Dante is tasked with stealing and sabotaging.
And Then, There Were Feelings
Dante never intended to get personally involved, but he never expected Orion. Orion is an unplanned, inefficient element. Orion has put up fierce resilience for a year, and learning about his situation upends every expectation Dante came to SVI territory with. While his initial mission is a straightforward act of corporate sabotage, it evolves into something far more treacherous. Dante is wracked with a heady mix of obsession, conflict, and unexpected vulnerability that reshapes not only Dante’s mission but his entire world outlook and what he wants out of his existence.
Can’t Resist
Dante feels an uncontrollable pull toward Orion, whom he can’t get out of his thoughts. Once Leo asks Dante to help with his asset’s behavior modification techniques, Dante really can’t resist Orion at all. Orion fights his own body’s responses to Dante as violently as he does Leo’s advances, but there’s an underlying tension there, where Orion knows that Dante can help him, can give him what Leo cannot, and that tension ramps up so deliciously, it’s so good. As the stakes rise, he’s forced to battle his own conditioning and realize that the strongest bonds aren’t manufactured—they’re forged.
Themes
The definition of the human identity, which is better: manufactured bonds vs. real connections, and the portrayal of corporations all are used to explore complex themes in The Sterling Acquisition.
Human Identity
The question of human identity is a central theme of the Sterling Acquisition.
This is a world where corporate control tries to control human relationships, pushing the boundaries and blurring the lines between personal autonomy and corporate authority. Corporations are all-powerful. They have all the rights. Everything is very 1984. But instead of fascism, it’s capitalism at its absolute worst. A world that believes humans are nothing if they’re not efficient. Any variance in emotions is unwelcome. Even the Alpha/Omega elements that people have as part of their innate biology are ruthlessly suppressed. Alphas are not allowed to have ruts. Omegas are not allowed to have heats. These are biological imperatives in an Omegaverse. But these corporations have all the power to suppress humans in even their most private biology.
Manufactured Bonds vs. Real Connection
Another main aspect of the narrative lies in the question of whether forced bonding, used as a tool of control, is superior to an organically built emotional connection. How shared moments that build trust and real bonds are distrusted, but it’s ok to chemically alter the mind of Omegas to bend their will to the Alphas in charge?
Why corporations would push forced bonding instead of relationships that are built on legitimate and real foundations immediately comes to mind as well.
One thing that helps the reader contextualize this is an understanding that corporations teach their populations to see Omegas as property, not people in this dystopian romance. If an Omega’s wishes are seen as inefficient and something to squash like a bug, chemical bonding makes sense. When seeing things from this mindset, it’s easier to see why there is a corporate push for forced bonding.
Dante, though, even with years of conditioning, starts to see the cracks in this corporate façade. The façade fully crumbles once he fully views Orion as a person, someone who is not property, not an asset. It’s only then that he can dare to ask himself the question: Who deserves loyalty, really?
Portrayal of Corporations
The dystopian romance portrayed in The Sterling Acquisition portrays a future that, subtracting the Alpha/Omega aspects, are frighteningly possible. Corporations and the top 1% essentially rule the US already, with powerful lobbies and laws that favor corporations over people. Labor laws only exist because of the massive struggle from workers, and with what’s currently going on politically, it’s horrifyingly easy to imagine a future where corporations are the actual governing entity. Imagine what sorts of things they could do if they were actually the ones making the laws? Corporations would take exploitation of labor forces to such an extreme. Just the idea leaves a pit of dread in my stomach.
Characters
Orion
Orion puts up fierce resistance. He’s fully defiant. He ferociously and steadfastly believes in his autonomy that has been ripped from him. Orion refuses to fall in line. He rebukes all attempts to suppress his iron will for freedom. His resistance pushes back at this corporate structure that reduces people to their function.
Dante
Dante is a corporate goon, who educates the reader on how to speak Corporate: language full of metaphors and euphemisms that gloss over and makes pretty what amounts to human subjugation and trafficking.
Asset management is bending Omegas to the will of the Alphas in charge. Asset transport is human trafficking. Behavior management is, well, it gets dicey.
Dante is there to steal Sterling Vance Industries’ property. The fact that the world now sees Omegas as property isn’t his fault; it’s just the way things are. Until he realizes that all his corporate conditioning is wrong, that is.
Dante navigates between deeply ingrained corporate duty and a growing feeling that he can’t abide by what the corporation he’s aligned with will do once he delivers Orion to them.
Falling for Orion means Dante must push against corporate conditioning that begins at birth for the Gensyn population. Each moment, whether it’s a heated argument or a stolen kiss, becomes another thing to analyze, who he thinks he is and has him questioning who it is he actually wants to be.
Recommend or No?
I think this dystopian romance is the start of a great series, and if you’re at all a fan of Alpha/Omega dynamics, or dystopian futures, you should give this a read. You will love it.
Review Paragraph
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