Chaos Vector
The Protectorate series, Book 2
Megan E. O'Keefe
Orbit
Fiction, Sci-Fi
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: The prototype AI vessel Light of Berossus is gone, fleeing the system rather than being used as a devastating weapon in the ongoing conflict between Ada Prime - loyal subject of the star-spanning Prime civilization - and the breakaway faction on Icarion, which rejects the stifling rules of the Prime Keepers and their terrifyingly effective guardcore enforcers. Major Sanda Greeve of Ada has been returned to her family, alive and well (if sans one leg)... but a fugitive, framed for the death of rogue Keeper Laveaux. During her time in captivity, someone stuck a Keeper chip into her head containing coordinates that Laveaux was desperate to obtain. Now, those coordinates are her only clue to the vast conspiracy she inadvertently unearthed, but to reach them she'll need a ship and an unorthodox crew. Fortunately, one of her fathers still has contacts in some very out-of-the-way places, and she still has the trust and support of her Keeper brother Biran. Unfortunately, the danger she discovered will spare no one, and the truth she finds will upend everything she ever thought she knew about Prime and the Casimir Gates that connect humanity across the stars.
REVIEW: The second installment of the Protectorate (probable) trilogy starts almost right where the first one left off, with Sanda and Biran still up to their necks, or rather well over their heads, in danger. O'Keefe does not bother to recap, but jumps right back into the action; given that it's been a while since I read Velocity Weapon, it took me some time to get back up to speed, but the writing is fun and characters distinctive enough to keep me turning pages even when I was still scrounging the gray matter for memories of who was who and what was what. There are almost no lulls in the plot as Sanda, Biran, and the other core characters race to uncover a long-lost secret, scramble to determine friend from foe, and try to stop a disaster in the making, all while facing an essentially immortal enemy with many faces (or many versions of the same face) and who has had centuries to study humanity and plot its destruction. There are few backslides in character intelligence, and while characters do make mistakes, they're mistakes made honestly and not because of an author deliberately turning their brains to gelatin for the sake of extending a plot. Most find their sense of morality pushed from sharp black and white into increasingly dark shades of gray, forced to weigh options where there is no pure or bloodless or oath-honoring solution, some being pushed to extremes they never imagined. Throughout it all, there's a nice sense of humanity underlying the character interactions, making the devastation all the more stark. The ending sets up a third book that looks like an even bigger thrill ride... one which I don't intend to wait quite so long to read, once it's released this summer. (I will be fully vaccinated by then, and am already plotting a major bookstore binge to honor the occasion... future global or national disasters permitting, of course.)
You Might Also Enjoy:
Leviathan Wakes (James S. A. Corey) - My Review
Velocity Weapon (Megan E. O'Keefe) - My Review
A Fire Upon the Deep (Vernor Vinge) - My Review
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