The Pilot

The Last Horizon #4

by Will Wight

“Sheep, sheep, sheep…I have bad news for you. It’s finally my turn.”

Solstice, the secret organization running the Galactic Union, has made an enemy of The Last Horizon. Soon, they will regret it.

Varic and Omega have a plan to infiltrate and destroy Solstice’s leaders, removing another threat to the galaxy. Compared to the apocalyptic monsters the crew has faced in the past, this opponent should be simple.

Omega has waited decades for his chance at revenge before becoming the Pilot of The Last Horizon. He will do anything for vengeance…or so he believes.

Victory will demand more from Omega than he imagines, and it won’t be as easy as he hopes.

Solstice has Zenith Devices of their own.

Genres: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Audiobook, Space Opera, Fiction, Adventure, Magic

421 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 1, 2025

Reviews

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

The strongest ending in the series

This book starts strong and only gets stronger. Will Wight's books have always had fantastic pacing and great endings, but this may be his best ending yet.

[A.R · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely amazing entry, this series keeps getting better. Tons of action, humor, and you actually get to learn more of Omega! Only thing I hate is that it ends on a cliffhanger.

[Marie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unbelievable

Like actually it is hard for me to believe any of this as my suspension of disbelief is destroyed every couple of pages. Multiple times during every fight the equivalent Achilles taking an arrow to the heel happens and then it is just waved away by the next page.

[Terence · Rating 4 out of 5]

A shadowy organization lurks throughout the galaxy, it is known as Solstice. This foe was chosen by the Pilot, Omega. He has battled them throughout his long life. He has never been able to eradicate Solstice or learn who's truly in charge of the organization. Omega hopes that he and the crew of The Last Horizon can annihilate Solstice for good.

The Pilot was better than I was expecting. I do enjoy a secret organization that is in control of everything and Solstice didn't disappoint. They are even more dangerous and deadly than I could envision. On top of Solstice, there are other threats that are mentioned that increase the pressure on the crew of The Last Horizon and their galaxy in general. Most notably, the awakening of two new Zenith devices that are battling against The Last Horizon and her crew.

The Zenith Processor Void Prism and the Zenith Blade Hallow Divide give the crew of The Last Horizon more than they can handle. Void Prism seems to predict nearly everything happening and is able to counter it instantly. What Prism lacks in power is more than made up by Hallow Divide and its wielder Aila Escalon. Aila's combat art is defensively focused, but when it is paired with the Hallow Divide she is more than a match for any challenge she could face.

The biggest surprise was Omega himself. I wasn't shocked to learn there was more to him than a psychotic murderer, but seeing his story was sad to put it mildly. There is a reason Omega became who he is today and the Pilot does a nice job of explaining it. I wish the series would help all the characters come alive like Omega did in this book.

The Pilot is a nice bridge book with some touching moments and an intense ending. I look forward to what happens next.

[Oliver Kitchen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always find this series an easy read and this one was no exception. The action and characters remain engaging and the universe is still a lot of fun. I did think the antagonists for this one were less enjoyable than the previous books. An elaborte conspiricy, even with the reveal of who's behind it, is just less fun to me than necromorphs crossed with the borg, for example

This installment is clearly the "raise the stakes" story that ends with kind of a darkest hour moment and leaves a lot less answered than usual. actually losing a crew member was a surprise, does this mean that they're going to have to recruite a new pilot and, if so, will it be a new character or someone we've already seen? Also, I still don't understand what makes curse magic different from the others, it's not like any of his other specialties interact

Overall, an enjoyable read but hopefully the next one has more explosions and less lamenting that "the enemy is always one step ahead of us"

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was another fantastic entry is what is becoming a favorite sci-fantasy series of mine. The characters continue to grow and evolve to come together for the security of the galaxy. Each character (crew member) draws you in their own way and makes you fall in love with them. The story is ever expanding and the stakes keep getting bigger and bigger. Will is an amazing author that has captured the hearts of people all over with Cradle and now with The Last Horizon series. I can’t wait for the complete series to lean all there is to know about each character

[AJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

emotional beats didn't hit well enough, plot/pacing was a bit strange. Ending made me very excited for the next installment however.

[Bryce Leo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This series is hard for me. There's so much going on and yet so little character development. There is exactly one character I care about and that's Raion. The fact that Varic hasn't had a schism between his knowledge of someone from another life and who they currently are is probably the least believable part of this whole ordeal and yet honestly it makes sense because there's been no character development except with Raion. This paltry dribble we get with Omega doesn't even count because we don't have a past Omega that Varic really knew.
I think another thing that gets to me is that the problems are heavily contrived by poor communication and while some level of that is forgivable we're at the point where it's eyerollingly bad.
With the battles you have this weird dichotomy of "each individual is so strong they can destroy everyone" and "5 randos with pew pews have kept them pinned down for an hour" and the scale of the battles never really feels natural. The first one that I felt like went really well was the event at Fathom. The others, generally spotty.
I miss the Will Wight books that made characters feel real and that you could invest in. I keep waiting for that to happen here and it looks like I'll keep waiting.

[Aiden Tabrah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is on the verge of 4 and 5 stars, it's just a lovely continuation of everything that was set up before. My least favorite character died (yay!) in an impactful way, the end of the book was awesome because everything is on the brink of falling apart, AND the captain used his last resort to lash out in a way I was not ready for (tbh I forgot he had this in his back pocket). Crazy ending which moved this to 5, just wish my least favorite character wasn't so annoying but glad he's dead. Also the crew seems particularly weak in this book compared to everyone else, but perhaps that's a good thing? All the pieces of the story are known now, excited to see how the game plays out.

[Daniel Shellenbarger · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Will Wight's writing and I like the Last Horizon series (even if it isn't really up to the standards of his prior Cradle or House of Blades' series), but this book, ehhhh... not so much. I gave it three stars but that's a flat 6 of 10 (and possibly even a high 5 of 10), reflecting that the writing is fine and the events are interesting, but I didn't particularly like it. Why? Well... partly it's because Will does something I absolutely detest in genre fiction: bringing back a defeated/dead opponent. Can't stand that. You beat the enemy, you move on. Cradle did this brilliantly, organically introducing more dangerous and interesting opponents and the few times old defeated villains are recycled it's primarily for comic effect and/or to showcase character growth (like when Lindon meets the Li Grand-Patriarch again in Threshold, so funny). But here, yes we get new villains but half of their plots seem to revolve around resurrecting old villains and making them their personal playthings. Dumb. I hate it. The other thing that really grinds my gears is that this is one of those stories where one of the villains can predict EVERYTHING and so no matter what our heroes do they just keep losing and getting painted as the bad guys while the villains get everything they want. It's not fun, it's frustrating and miserable, and I can understand the desire to use this to build pressure on our heroes and raise the stakes, but you gotta do something to counteract that: have a subplot where a character makes meaningful growth and achieves something. I mean, I suppose the eponymous Pilot did have some character growth and a bit of catharsis, but it didn't exactly provide a fun payoff of any sort, nor did any of the other subplots, which all seemed to revolve around things getting worse and worse for our heroes. Also, Aila, terrible character. Like Omega without any of his psychotic humor but also too stupid to see her hand in front of her face, just seems stupid the Zenith Sword, which has expressly stated it doesn't like working with its manipulative brother the Zenith Prism, would pick someone so willfully willing to ignore the fact that they're working not only WITH the Zenith Prism but for obvious villains who bluntly express their villainy RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER. Just kill her off off-page before the next book, please. Sigh... All that said, I didn't HATE it, I just kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, for our heroes to reveal that they'd done something clever behind the scenes, but no, nothing of the sort and in the end the "victory" such as it is comes from the villains basically own-goaling themselves accidentally . I can't even be all that excited about the next book because it seems like all the villains the villains of this book recycled just got passed on to the next villain. Even so, while this is a definite misstep in my opinion, I've seen more than enough from Will Wight to give him the benefit of the doubt and jump on the next book when it comes out. But I certainly wouldn't say no to another collection of Cradle short stories instead...

[Nicholas Tuck · Rating 3 out of 5]

I still love this series. The world, magic, tech, the uniquely different characters and villains, all so great. I love Omega, his goofy, crazy personality, so I was pretty stoked for this one. However this book didn't quite hit as hard for me. There wasn't enough depth into the background of Omega, following what happened to him, his past and any overlap with Venri like the other characters got. The overall story also zoomed way out very quickly, introducing many Zenith devices, abstract ideas of World Spirits and all the different races warring with each other, all in the same book, it just felt like too much too quickly and I wasn't sure what was really going on. Plus some odd literary choices jumped between scenes in ways I felt I missed a few pages.

I still loved some of fight scenes. Omega and his daughter's scenes were fantastic. Even though I think we're overdoing it with "clones", it felt like everything is a clone or a mirror copy in this book, clones are still fascinating to play out, and that was a fun theme to explore.

Not my favorite of the series, but man do I enjoy the series still and greatly look forward to the next.

[Robert Fugate · Rating 3 out of 5]

To me, The Pilot feels like a set up book for the endgame of the Last Horizon series. It takes the crew’s missions away from kind of feeling like one off adventures, and leads us towards the bigger picture of the series. In my opinion, this greatly weakens the story of this book itself. While it is probably a necessary book for the series, The Pilot is by far the weakest so far to me. However, it does an amazing job of making me want to read the rest of the series, and I’m a little sad that I have to wait for the next book to come out before I figure out what happens. I still love the fast paced action packed nature of these books. I love reading about Varic Vallenar a the rest of the Last Horizon’s crew. I’m sure the next book will be a step back in the right direction for me, this one just didn’t live up to the others in this fantastic series.

[Kenneth Zhu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book was fun like most of the series, but this book was basically one big crisis that never gets resolved. Fun, but not as satisfying as the others because of it.

[Sean Halpin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I almost want to knock a star off due to the massive cliffhanger, but man do I love omega.

[Zachary Caldwell · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I'm falling off this series.

[Bas · Rating 5 out of 5]

High octane action. Every character shines in their own way. The only thing I hate about this is that I have to wait months until the next one.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Felt very rushed. I didn't really care about the pilot, he was never properly introduced.

[Kenneth · Rating 3 out of 5]

The beginning and the end were hard to read. HOWEVER, it is for different reasons. The beginning felt like it dragged on. The ending felt like your best friend got angry and then slapped you in the face. If Solstice was real I would immediately declare war on them.

I would rank it above elder empire but below cradle books without Eithan.

[Andrew Rockwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.0 stars—-

While this entry is my least favorite of the series so far, I’m still coming back for the characters.
It’s a family of misfits living on a magical spaceship fighting evil corporations and alien entities, what’s not to love?
Omega’s backstory was also surprisingly good, Will continues to grow as a writer.

[Kyle D. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Much less fun than the previous entries.

First the good.

1) Killing off a main character is always a good way to raise tension. That said, I'm unsure if it's a final killing off.

2) Reveal of Solstice is fun as well as teasers around the Zenith devices.



Then the frustrating.

1) The plot arc isn't complete. This is like the first half of a book, with all rising action that suddenly cuts off. This is always a major pet peeve of mine and it's frustrating to hit when the last three books were good, self-contained units.

2) The pacing is frenetic. All the dashing around leaves little time for character work among our cast. Why build all these fun characters if we don't get any breathing room for characterization and byplay? By now, Mel and Raion have been main characters, so I expect more from them.

3) The power creep is unreal. So our very OP main characters must face an omniscient and omnipresent enemy...which always beggars belief. How is a secret organization secret if every fourth person works for them? How does every plan of theirs work perfectly as planned? And for the love of God, why would Omega's daughter work for them? If her goal is to contain her dad to prevent deaths then why go around killing tons of people??

4) Bringing back a dead enemy ... enough said.

[Adam Willis · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was half a book, and when you are releasing one book a year it’s hard not to take off stars for this. The story was classic Will Wight writing style, which does help it salvage 3 stars. It felt like the first 75% of the book was pointless, and just when it got good he ends it on a cliffhanger. As someone who has read all of his books and love them, this was a disappointment

[Andy Klein · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was extremely hard to follow at all times. I could barely keep track of the characters and what was going on. I’ve completely lost interest in all of the characters and couldn’t care less what happens next.

[Jason Humphries · Rating 5 out of 5]

A big step up from The Knight. Feels like the series has found it's footing again and is now on the path to the big showdown.

I once again went into this book with my Last Horizon Expectations that I set for myself in order to not be disappointed:
1. At no point will there be any character growth
2. At no point will there be any romance
3. At no point will the deep interpersonal relationships of the crew be addressed. The characters will only have superficial interactions.
I might not need to remind myself of these anymore, we're far enough into the series that I know what to expect. Small surprise: Omega actually had some minor character growth! Very exciting! Idk if it counts though because of everything that happened at the end.

Spoilers:

I feel like every book they start out getting wrecked and losing their ship or something and this one is no exception. They say it's because they were caught off guard, but that's dumb because they were flying directly into what they suspected was a trap. Why weren't they prepared? Dumb plothole. The Last Horizon team is so overpowered it feels like the only reason they ever lose is because the plot demands that they lose a battle early in every book.

The last book villains were underwhelming, but this book did not disappoint. I like the slow build up to immortal wizards. Every book people have called Varrick the greatest Wizard in the galaxy and he always corrects them to say greatest "mortal" wizard. The reveal that Solstice is actually a group of World Spirits is peak fiction. And they're bent committing any atrocity as long as it has a chance to make the iteration stronger.

Starhammer/Mel got treated poorly in this. He was such a threat but now his battles are so unimportant that they mostly happen offscreen. This is the meme where when the good guys fight a villain he wrecks all of them, but then when he joins the team suddenly he's 1/10th as powerful. And then he gets inexplicably stolen despite all of the precautions they took

Benri dying multiple times was great! The last one faked me out.

Where are the Sola upgrades? She did a bunch of cool stuff last book that should give her upgrade points, and this book she nearly killed a world spirit. Also she had multiple master Aether technicians working on her suit. Yet it didn't really change anything. Better be saving up for something awesome next book.

Raion barely had any screentime, just fighting the sword over and over. If he's the moral center of the group why wasn't he mad at Omega for killing thousands of civilians?

This was the swan song for Omega and done pretty well. His flashback chapters finally humanized him a little bit. And his slowly building insanity for being unable to stop Solstice felt real. I like how he responded when finding out who Solstice was. Finding out that the reason he couldn't win is that he was fighting immortal gods was good vindication and then he was then ready to move on. This is probably the best character growth we've seen in this series, though he did sacrifice/suicide himself minutes later. Also, I still don't like his daughter. The plot required her to be pretty stupid in order to keep working against her father despite the mountain of evidence that he was right.

There is a Lemon scene that is pretty clearly tacked on at the end of a fight scene. The scene is very carefully plotted and paced right up until they escape, then suddenly there's a perspective switch and Lemon comes in and also helps them escape. I'm pretty sure if you removed the Lemon paragraphs it would flow perfectly. Clearly just added on afterwards by the author. This is the second book in a row where she has inexplicably shown up and then disappeared without affecting anything. Can't decide whether to laugh at this or be annoyed.

Ending on a cliffhanger is annoying but these books come out every 6 months so no big deal. Kind of impossible to see where things will go now that Fathom itself is cursed. Nothing has been explained about what being cursed means. Also, Omega is actually dead? Hopefully Shyrax gets his subspace powers.

[Shannon Stehle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really like Will Wight’s writing, and this installment did not disappoint. I felt like the world was ending like halfway through and it still got worse after that. It’s impressive how bleak this midway point of the series is. I have always been playing catchup with Wight’s writing before this series, so having a cliffhanger actually be a cliffhanger is ROUGH. I genuinely have no idea how bad it is going to get from here. I really enjoy the world-building that goes into this series, and I am so excited for what happens next. I think I will need the next installment before I figure out if Omega’s sacrifice is worth it to me or not. I wonder who the new pilot will be (even if he’s not permanently dead, which I feel like he is, will has said the new pilot is someone we know). I really liked him as a character, but I find his world view jarring from the rest of the cast. They need someone morally gray on their team to keep things interesting, but maybe not quite as deranged? Honestly I’m not sure, but I think I can trust Will to handle it well based on his Cradle series.

These books move so fast, so I can understand some of the complaints around character development, but I do think the characters are undergoing it. We just don’t see a lot of it all the time because Will has next to no downtime in his works. If that is an issue for you, I strongly recommend you not read his other series, you will continue to be annoyed.

[Khari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, for some reason, I thought this was not the fourth book but the third book and that I had already read it, which is why it waited a whole month after being published to find its way into my kindle and into my brain.

It was a rip roaring adventure of fun, the same as all Will Wight books.

I knew that Horizon and crew would win. But, they didn't really win, it's more like they survived. I'm not really sure what is going to happen in the next one, although I think it might have something like Alia taking the place of her father as the Pilot.

I was actually sad that Omega chose to sacrifice himself. I wasn't really expecting someone to actually die in this series, what with all these super-powered people with machinery that can bring them back to life over and over again. But it was his redeeming moment, so I think he's probably going to stay dead.

Anyway, I enjoyed reading it. I will enjoy reading the next one, but I am pretty curious. How is Varic going to recover from this one? How will he continue now that the curse magic is free? What will he do now that his staff is gone? Not to mention everyone seem pretty beat up. All of his allies are half-dead, dead, or lacking their uber-weapons. How are they going to pull out of this? I look forward to it!

Now begins the endless waiting...again.

[Kenzie LaMar · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is terrible. Worst book Will has ever written. He made The Last Horizon a joke. The most powerful star ship in the universe is weak and a moron. It's crew of the most powerful heroes in the universe are also jokes. This is some of the worst writing I have read in a long long time. I loved the first 3 books so I finished this book. I would have DNFed half way through otherwise. This was one of my favorite series before this book. It was like seeing your favorite characters betray you and turn out to be idiots. This book alone has taken Will Wight down many many pegs for me. He was one of my favorites. I have read every book he has written. This book sucks that bad.

Omegas daughter is one of the dumbest characters I have ever read about in any book. She's right up there with Prism and the rest of the Zenith devices. I'm not sure I will read anything else from Will Wight after this. And Cradle is top 5 series for me of all time. This book is that bad. What a huge waste of time. This book went from a 3 star to a 2 and now a 1 at the end. If I could give it negative stars I would.

Will doesn't know how to write dark and moody women. Yarin is the only success he has of making that same character over and over in every series he has written. It's old and tired and I'm done.

[Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the lore and world building in this one but did not enjoy it as much as others. It’s probably because of the repeated loss after loss the crew kept taking. I get that each zenith device has its role to play, but the last horizon looked like it was designed to be just a little better than an average starship ( guess they did say it’s a glorified exploration vessel) which can be blocked in almost every scenario as long as some one knew what they are doing and coordinated a non zenith tech attack. The world spirit literally spent whole book crying it couldn’t do anything and just tried to communicate with the crew the whole time. Sorry, she couldn’t even do that because she’s blocked all the time, the enemy had to take pity and let her comms through. For a spirit that kept boasting to her siblings that she selected one of the most promising and experienced crew with outstanding abilities, I somehow did not see that in this book. The stakes were higher, but the crew looked like they just randomly jumped in to a fight without any preparation the whole time. The only reason we were given why they kept loosing to the zenith blade is they were caught off guard every time with their pants down.

[Drew · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would consider "The Pilot" to be the best book of Will Wight's "The Last Horizon" series. My rankings would probably go: 4 > 2 > 1 > 3. This series is especially fun and page-turning- realizing that I probably read like 200 pages of this each day without even realizing my progress until later on, it's just that enticing.

I know what to expect, and what not to expect, when reading this series. Goodreads reviewer Jason Humphries, in a review of his own, had described exactly how I feel about the series.

("1. At no point will there be any character growth
2. At no point will there be any romance
3. At no point will the deep interpersonal relationships of the crew be addressed. The characters will only have superficial interaction.")

And it was actually a pleasant surprise at some of the growth that we have seen with Omega. Each book has some flashback scenes (or different life of Varic), but this one managed it the best.

The book ends with a cliffhanger. It is always a pleasant treat after the ending pages to know the title of the following book. I am glad that I am 3/4 now in predicting what the following book will be called. (I guessed books 3, 4, and now 5 correctly).

[MG · Rating 2 out of 5]

I loved Will Wight's CRADLE series as well as his TRAVELERS GATE trilogy. But I have grown disenchanted with his current project, THE LAST HORIZON series. This is volume 4 and I finally figured out the problem. In this sci-fi space opera, there exists both highly advanced technology and highly advanced magic so that the range of what is possible is almost infinite. This undermines the drama because, like the old Roger Moore James Bond movies, you never really worry that the main character is in trouble but only what new outrageous series of events will allow him to win the day. I found it too hard to track all the levels of technology and magic to really follow along. So here is someone impossible to kill. Okay. Then he dies. Okay. As a reader I was not "in" the dramatic moment but just processing what happened with little involvement. At the same time, I felt the psychology of all the characters were not similarly advanced but instead rather primitive, even juvenile at times. Others might have enjoyed all the tech and magic and over-top-characters are not unusual in adventure fantasy, but I'm afraid this series stopped working for me.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of all the enemies the crew has faced, this group is somehow the most foul. Given that the competition includes mechromancers and giant bug swarms, that's really saying something. The previous book worked together with this one to really drive home just how callus, toxic, and merciless Solstice is. Gotta love a villain like that, as long as they get their comeuppance with maximum schadenfreude.
The lady with the sword was much less tolerable. She's... just kind of a self-righteous brat, actually. Unparalleled tunnel vision and a complete inability to run the numbers, and written completely two-dimensional. I think we're supposed to empathize with her, but she's such a personality blank that I found it impossible. She was just an annoyance who showed up every time things got hectic and made them way worse. The first take in the book is the correct one: she's just a dog on a chain.
I thoroughly enjoyed the ending. When they put you in checkmate, burn the building down.