Thursday, September 5, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Velocity Weapon by Megan E O'Keefe




Velocity Weapon is the first in a Space Opera trilogy by author Megan O'Keefe, which tries some really interesting things through its several viewpoint characters.  I don't love the "Space Opera" genre label, because it tends to be used for practically any SciFi story that either takes place in space or involves space ships that isn't blatantly MilSci (And even sometimes then).  The result is that space opera is sometimes used to describe books whose scope isn't particularly big despite the expansive setting and sometimes used to describe books which are completely epic in scope.

Velocity Weapon is definitely the start of a trilogy that is perhaps better described as "Epic SciFi," with the story jumping back and forth between large stretches of space and time repeatedly, to tell a story that concerns the fates of entire planets and beyond.  And it works, managing to tell a story with some interesting characters, some decent plot twists, and a pace that moves along nicely despite the book being 500+ pages long.  The book has some issues - most significantly in how it has one subplot that frustratingly interrupts the action repeatedly in order to set up future books - but if you're looking for some epic scifi, there's some good stuff here.


------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-----------------------------------------------------
Sanda Greeves is a sergeant in the Prime military, the commander of a starship in defense of the Prime colony of Ada Prime....or she was, until she woke up in a medically sealed escape pod onboard a ship.  And not just any ship, but an enemy ship belonging to the Icarion fleet which she last remembers engaging her ship near the satellite of Dralee.  And to her surprise, the ship has an AI, which introduces itself as Bero, and tells her that 200 years has passed since the battle of Dralee and since Icarion unleashed its secret weapon and destroyed both itself and Ada Prime....leaving Sanda as the last surviving human in the system.

Sanda's brother Biran Greeves, was just graduating to become a Keeper, the politicians in charge of Prime operations, known for having a chip surgically installed in their brains, when news came of the Battle of Dralee.  Desperate for news of his sister's fate in the battle, Biran decides to take risks as he searched for any information as to what happened out there with Icarion.  But when Biran finds that his higher-ups may know more than they're telling the general public, he begins to take actions that find him immersed not just with the search for his sister's fate and the safety of his people, but with a conspiracy he could never have expected.

And far far away from it all, in another system, a crew of scavengers track a shipment of illicit drugs to an abandoned lab, only to get involved in a dangerous game with a mysterious opponent with connections to the highest level of Prime, and the intention to eliminate anyone who steps in their way....
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Velocity Weapon is a book split into a LOT of chapters (82! + several uncounted Interludes) split mainly (with a few exceptions) between the three lead characters' perspectives: Sanda's, whose story is the central one, Biran's, and that of Jules (one of the scavengers mentioned above).  For the most part the book alternates perspectives each chapter, although it is not afraid to mess with this structure from time to time, to effective results.  Obviously, the multi character POV type epic story should be very familiar to readers these days given its popularity, but Velocity Weapon makes it work well and plays some nice tricks with it.

It's helped by the book's two main leads being pretty solid characters, in Sanda and Biran.  Sanda is an incredibly quick to adapt and solid main lead, whose curiosity and willingness to risk it all to do what's right makes her both a little hard to predict and easy to root for.  She really carries much of this book, and it works because of her.  Biran isn't quite as good, but his willingness to go beyond his official duties to try and find and help his sister also helps keep his segments of the plot easy and interesting to read.  There's one relationship with a former classmate which the book tries to attach extra significance too that maybe doesn't work, but for the most part, Biran is really solid.

And the plot itself is generally well done, at least Sanda and Biran's portions.  The book's antagonists are intriguing and the plots - both Sanda and Bero as they try to figure out what to do with everything destroyed and Biran with the other Keepers as he tries to figure out what truly happened in the battle - are written very effectively to keep the reader really wanting to keep going and see what's going on.  And then there's the occasional interludes to the distant past, which flesh out the setting in intriguing ways and provide tantalizing hints as to things happening behind the scenes in this book and in the rest of the series.

Unfortunately, if you couldn't tell from the above two paragraphs, the book has some issues.  None of the main characters outside of Biran, Sanda, and Bero are particularly well done, and the most significant other character in their storylines has his entire existence tied to one of the leads and is fine, but uninteresting on his own as a result - and I didn't quite buy the romantic attachment.  But the biggest issue is the third storyline, that of Jules and her scavengers.  At first it seems like this plot might connect with the other two, but it doesn't take long for the reader to realize this plot is solely being set-up to come into play later in the trilogy.  And this is not an uncommon feature in books like these - most classicly done in modern series by Daenarys' storyline in A Game of Thrones (SoIaF) - but usually these distant to the side storylines are more clearly connected by common characters or issues tot he main ones, and that's barely the case here.  Even worse, this storyline is so distant and just is so different from the other two major storylines that when the book shifts from the two major arcs to the third one, often in the middle of major events!, it's jarring and annoying since it feels like an unwanted interruption.

I don't want to sound too negative on this book, I generally liked it, and am very intrigued by how things turn out that I definitely want to see how things go on in the future books in this trilogy - even as to the Jules storyline.  So if you are looking for a epic scifi/space-opera series, Velocity Weapon might just be for you.
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