ARC provided by the publisher—Orbit—in exchange for an honest review

Velocity Weapon by Megan E. O’Keefe
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An incredibly entertaining start to a new space opera series.

Velocity Weapon is the first book in The Protectorate series by Megan E. O’Keefe. This was my first experience reading O’Keefe’s work and I had a fantastic time with it. isn’t an easy book for me to review. It’s not because I found the book to be disappointing or not up to my preference, but I honestly think that many components of the storyline or what makes this book truly great can be considered a spoiler that the task of reviewing this book ended up being more difficult than usual.

“Being offended by facts is a long human tradition.”

The story in Velocity Weapon begins with Sanda finding herself awake 230 years in the future inside a sentient spaceship who calls himself Bero, shortened from The Light of Berossus. Bero is an enemy spaceship and he tells Sanda that the war has ended; the star system is completely dead now. Then, we have Biran—Sanda’s younger brother—as the second main POV character; his story takes place in the present timeline as he tries to find Sanda’s location. Separated by distance and time, both Sanda and Biran will have to do everything they can to survive or unveil the truth. Velocity Weapon tells a story of survival and intergalactic politics. I found the pacing and the tone of this book to be refreshing to read. O’Keefe’s storytelling style has a way of keeping things fun and gripping without ever making the tone of the story too dark; the right balance of varying emotions in this book was achieved through its charming characters.

‘In the upper right of her HUD, text flashed: 😛
“Oh my god. They taught you emoticons.”’

I do believe that Velocity Weapon is a cleverly crafted novel. The usage of dual timelines in this book exhibited a strong sense of mystery; it made me intrigued to find out what happened within that 230 years differences. It was awesome to see how Biran’s and Sanda’s story connects with each other despite the differences in the timeline. O’Keefe cloaked revelations that should’ve been easily spotted in plain sight by making sure that the reader will be too immersed in the specific scene they’re reading; I was too absorbed to theorize about anything else. The characters, especially Sanda, was so easy to root for. A heroine like Sanda is hard to find in current SFF market; she’s a badass with no overpowered skills and she’s not a damsel in distress who’s hopelessly waiting to be saved. Not only that, reading her banter and dialogues with Bero and other side characters were super immersive, funny, and most importantly, hard to put down. The characterizations, their sexuality, their interactions, and the world of the series itself felt natural.

Admittedly, there was actually another prominent POV—Jules—other than Sanda’s and Biran’s. Although I found Jules’s storyline to be full of well-written actions, I didn’t find myself feeling invested in her story as much as I did for Sanda’s and Biran’s. This doesn’t mean that Jules’s story was lacking per se, it’s just that the sibling’s story was too good that every time the narrative shifted to Jules, I just wanted to go back to reading Sanda or Biran’s POV as fast as possible. Luckily, Jules’s last chapter in this book shows good promises on connectivity to the overarching storyline and more great things to come in the next installment.

I’m going to close my review here. In order to make this review spoiler-free, please know that I purposely left out some factors that, in my opinion, made the quality of the book even better. Imbued with exhilarating twists and turn, Velocity Weapon was a purely entertaining reading experience. If you’re a fan of sci-fi, space opera and the Mass Effect video game series by Bioware, your decision to purchase and read this delightful book should be settled already.

Official release date: June 11th, 2019

You can pre-order the book from: Amazon UK | Amazon US | Book Depository (Free shipping)

The quotes in this review were taken from an ARC and are subject to change upon publication.View all my reviews