Tuesday, July 14, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Chaos Vector by Megan E O'Keefe

Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on July 28, 2020 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

 Chaos Vector is the second in Megan E O'Keefe's "The Protectorate" series, which began with last year's "Velocity Weapon" (which I reviewed here).  I enjoyed Velocity Weapon, the first in an Epic Space Opera, although I didn't quite love it: the book was very long and concluded on not just a big cliffhanger, but also had a major side plotline that repeatedly interrupted the main plot at annoying times and then ended with an utter dud, to diminish my enjoyment of it all.  The story was excellent at introducing a number of really interesting mysteries and had a very solid lead character, so I was interested in continuing it further however.....but I didn't love it enough that I didn't have to do a quick skim of the first book before I could continue to the sequel.

NOTE:  This book's summary on booksellers online is completely misleading, referring to cooperation and conflict between parties who basically never come into contact with one another in this entire book as if it's a main focus.  So yeah, ignore that if you're trying to decide whether to take a spin on this book after reading its predecessor.

 And well, Chaos Vector is very similar to its predecessor: it features a strong main plot with a strong lead character, some very interesting mysteries - some new and some old - and some clearly weaker side plots that the narrative keeps shifting to an inappropriate moments.  It's again a rather long novel, and it makes solid use of all of that page length - a lot of stuff happens here, to the point where events you might expect to happen at the climax actually occur at the 1/3-through mark, and again it intrigued me enough that I'm probably in for another novel in this series.  At the same time, I just can't shake the feeling that I should like this one more than I actually did, which is hard to explain.

 NOTE2:  It's impossible to avoid spoiling the main twist from Velocity Weapon.  So SPOILERS FOR VELOCITY WEAPON BELOW THE JUMP - I'm not going to try to avoid them here and you really can't read this book without reading Velocity Weapon first.  
------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------------
Sanda Greeve has survived an assault from a mysteriously inhuman Keeper Lavaux and her time on the most dangerous weapon seemingly ever invented: The Light of Berossus - known to her as her former "friend" Bero.  Now, thanks to doctored footage, she's on the run with one of her fathers and the Nazca spy Tomas, without any hint of what to do next except to investigate the mystery that caused all of these troubles: the mysterious coordinates in space wanted by the dead Keeper.

But in the process of trying to find a way to get to those coordinates, Sanda finds herself allying with the remnants of a gang of thieves, including a super-skilled hacker and a former soldier, who are on the lookout for their friend: Jules, the young woman who accidentally killed a Keeper two years ago.  Their search leads Sanda back to the mysterious Rainier Lavaux, the supposed wife of Keeper Lavaux and who is clearly far more than that - a being with means and an agenda that threatens the entire galaxy.  And as Sanda discovers more about Rainier's plans and the mysterious coordinates, she begins to discover that the foundation of humanity's expansion into the galaxy may not be as true as she once thought.....

Meanwhile, Jules has spent the last two years working for Rainier for the purpose of finding a way to restore to life her comatose friend, and has been helping Rainier obtain a number of scientists to work on a program for Rainier's mysterious goals.  But Jules, now changed by the ascension agent, isn't worried about Rainier's true goals and is willing to do whatever it takes, no matter the cost, to save her sleeping friend.......
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Velocity Weapon featured an Epic Space Opera with essentially three narratives, with each narrative featuring one of three point of view characters: Sanda, Biran, and Jules.  Sanda is essentially the main protagonist of the series, with her activities inside Bero and the revelations that ensued driving the main focus of the plot both in the last book and in this one.  Biran in the last book had his own plot that intersected with Sanda (he's her brother and a Keeper, the type of government leader entrusted with a chip in his head that detailed the technology that spread humanity to the stars), and so while his arc was a secondary one, it dovetailed directly with Sanda's so it never felt out of place.  Jules' arc on the other hand was totally separate, with no connection to the main arc until the very end, where a character from the main arc (Rainier Levaux) forced Jules into working for her.  As such, Jules' arc - as well as the occasional flashbacks the series would have to the creator of Prime, the government that spread space travel to humanity - really never paid off in that last book, and it left a reader really hoping it would in this book.

The good news is that it takes practically no time at all for Jules to intersect with the other main characters this time around, and everything comes together quickly.  And while that definitely happens, it happens at the same time as the book separating out one of the other narratives from the main one and leaving it on the side.  Chaos Vector adds a fourth narrative - Tomas, the Nazca spy who fell in love with Sanda (and vice versa) which does intersect with Jules and Sanda (duh) - but splits Biran out to the side, where he's more or less trying to deal with the local system fallout from last book's actions while the rest of the cast is dealing with seemingly wider concerns.

And well, Sanda's plot works really well, which is key because she's again essentially the main character.  The book wastes no time building her a support cast this time around, and they get a little more development than any support cast did last book (some are returning characters), but the key focus is Sanda and she's great.  Now in better command of what's going on around her, Sanda is resourceful and highly intelligent in a world where seemingly everyone she could trust has turned out to be false, and full of the determination needed to try and both figure things out and put things right.  The book hints early that she might have a conflict with her new crew over their divergent agendas - they want to rescue Jules, she wants to investigate the coordinates - but it smartly avoids that conflict ever really coming into play, with Sanda being sure to get her team on the same page: and the one time she can't, she ensures that won't be a factor.

And her plot, which again is the main one for this book, takes some really interesting turns as she discovers more about Rainier and the coordinates, and what they mean about humanity's true journey into space three thousand years ago. The first book did a great job building a bunch of tantalizing mysteries into the plot, and this book goes into overdrive doing the same thing, even as it answers a few of the old ones.  What is Rainier and what is her goal?  What really happened at the creation of Prime and humanity's expansion into the stars, and what was behind the sphere that gave Alexandra the knowledge needed to pull it off?  And how much do the keepers know about it all, and what is the connection between them and Rainier?  And where do the Nazca fit in all this?  These are all incredibly tantalizing questions, and the book does a great job making them all interesting and making me want to read further to get answers.

Unfortunately, as I hinted above, the other narratives don't quite measure up, and where they separate from the main narrative they become significantly less interesting.....and like the last book, the story seems to jump between the narratives often at random moments, so a cliffhanger for Sanda will be interrupted by a jump to Biran for seemingly no reason, which is just annoying.  Biran's attempts to prevent war in his home system and to build a new Gate just can't help but feel minor in comparison to Sanda's galaxy-spanning quest, and while they do obviously connect in the end, the connection is one sided and kind of frustrating (Spoiler in ROT13: Onfvpnyyl abguvat Ovena qbrf punatrf gur bhgpbzr bapr ur frgf vg va zbgvba gb unir gur frpbaq tngr ohvyg, juvpu vf whfg vaperqvoyl sehfgengvat gb ernyvmr ng gur raq.  Vg whfg ohvyqf grafvba gung ur pna arire erfbyir va guvf obbx sbe ab ernfba frrzvatyl.).  And while Jules and Tomas' narratives are far more connected, and are definitely more interesting as a result, where they go is often frustrating in and of themselves, with Jules' final actions seemingly like a massively out of character decision.

The result is a space opera novel that is still epic in scope and still leaves me wanting answers....but also is incredibly frustrating at the same time.  If this book was a movie, I'd likely wikipedia the next book's page to see what happens first before I decide to read it to try and get those answers and see if the frustration might abate.  Alas, it's not, and I will probably continue on to the third book to see how things resolve.  I just hope O'Keefe will tie everything together more firmly in the future - there's some really great setup here (much of which I haven't really talked about in this review!), but just enough problems to prevent me from being as happy with it all as I should be.

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)