Review - Velocity Weapon by Megan E O'Keefe

Velocity Weapon
Megan E O'Keefe
Orbit, 13 June 2019
PB, 505pp

"The last thing Sanda remembers is her gunship exploding..."

I'm grateful to the ever awesome Nazia at Orbit for a free advance copy of Velocity Weapon.

Debut author O'Keefe's novel is a proper serving of space opera - a genre I don't read regularly, but when I do, it has to be just right. And this is. We have a space war, political machinations, galaxy spanning civilisation, futuristic technologies, a doomsday weapon, and a nagging feeling that someone we can't see is pulling the strings. All smoothly written, with pace and verve - and more to come.

When Sergeant Sanda Greeve wakes in a survival pod after the disastrous battle of Dralee, any joy at her survival is soon tempered as she's told it has been hundreds of years since Dralee. Both her homeworld and Iscariot, planet of her enemies, have been destroyed by Iscarion's new planet-busting weapon, along with her family, and she's now stranded on an enemy ship. The Light of Berossus, the only human left alive in the system.  The Light - or Bero, as he prefers to be known - is himself a character in the person of a brooding AI who welcomes Sanda (as well he might after so many years alone). But as she explores the ship and begins to discover what went on there, she has to question what he knows - and what he did...

Between chapters detailing Sanda's discoveries in the year 3771, the book follows her brother, Biran, in 3541 - the time of the battle itself. Biran has just passed out as a Keeper, one of the ruling class of his planet. Keepers are implanted with chips containing the plans for the Casimir Gates that link humanity's colonies in disparate start systems, and they also direct affairs on those colonies. Believing Sanda to be marooned in her survival pod, Biran is about to risk a great deal for her.

There is also a third strand - a heist organised by a group of criminals led by Jules, on another, unidentified, colony world. This might risk breaking the flow of the other two narratives, but O'Keefe's writing and plotting easily makes Jules' adventures absorbing in themselves, not least as she uses them to feed us additional information about the doings of the Keepers. In a neat contrast to Biran's high-mindedness, Jules seems pretty much amoral - she just wants to get a break, and claw her way up from the bad side of town. But the existence of that bad side and the way that people like her are treated does rather undermine the glittering vision of future society that Biran holds. How this will play out in future volumes remains to be seen but I think the idealism of Keeper society may actually mask some dark secrets.

The story itself was a joy to read. O'Keefe's writing is, as I said above, always compelling and the story itself moves along at a rattling pace with many surprises, reversals and twists (even as the seeds are planted for a much bigger story than a squabble in a remote system). The book may not be groundbreaking, but in giving Sanda a leg damaged in battle O'Keefe places a character with a disability centre stage (and gives the book overtones of Treasure Island) and she also has the original of her spacefaring civilisation be Ecuador, not the US, Russia or China, making it a little different. Spending time with Gunnery Sergeant Sanda Greeve is fun - she is a protagonist with a lot of whoomph, rather overshadowing comms specialist Tomas and indeed, little brother Biran.

I would strongly recommend this book - and am looking forward to its sequels.

For an extract from Velocity Weapon, see the Orbit website here.