Velocity Weapon - Megan E. O'Keefe

Velocity Weapon is the start of a new sci-fi series from Megan E.  O’Keefe, whose fantasy works I’ve talked about enthusiastically before. And I have to say, O’Keefe has hit the bullseye; this is a top-notch piece of science fiction. It has adventure and drama aplenty, and asks big questions, couching them alongside well-crafted character relationships in a pairing which seizes the attention, and keeps hold of it until the last page. 

In case you can’t tell, I rather liked this one. 

I’ve just deleted an entire paragraph, because it was perhaps a bit spoilery about the narrative, and that's something you'll want to discover on your own. So, let me say this instead. This is a space opera. It’s filled with human drama, clever tech, and lavish, well-realised word building. But it’s also a wonderfully crafted story. There are moments here that took my breath away. Twists that I didn’t see coming, sure. But then, those twists fold back on themselves escher-like, to reveal new and different truths. It’s bloody clever, and I’d do you a disservice to talk about it except in general terms. But believe me when I tell you that this is a story that is going to baffle and delight, devastate and enthral in equal measure. It’s  one you’ll be reading until four in the morning, and one you’ll be thinking about for longer than that. 

So, if I’m not going to talk about the story, I should talk about the characters. And they are the stars of the show, that’s a fact. 

The one closest to my heart is Sanda. A conflict survivor, she’s wounded both physically and mentally in that survival. But Sanda is a force on the page regardless, in both cases. She has real depth of presence, and speaking on the page, commands respect from the reader as wel as other characters. Sanda’s internal monologue is tightly focused, driven, sometimes beautifully contemplative. All that, and she’s several cans of whup-ass mixed with determination, heroism and a soupcon of compassion. There’s a genuine passion to Sanda’s search for her family in the aftermath of war, and a sharp edge to her grief, a cold pain searing off the page and into the reader with every word. A complex person, is Sanda, and that’s high praise. Not a character, not words, but a person, living, breathing, refusing to be broken, moving forward and living despite the world she finds herself in – with the assistance of a somewhat unreliable ship A.I.  

We also get to spend time with Sanda’s brother Biren, whose own story is subsumed in politics and in looking for his sister. Biren is young when we join him, a whip-smart individual, for sure. But naïve, perhaps dangerously so. Still, he has a clarity of vision and a purpose which make for refreshing reading, and their potential to be occluded by events is one viewed with a mixture of triumph and trepidation. Biren is shaping himself each action putting him into positions which give him what he wants, maybe what he needs, but also help tie him in, bind him to the society which he’s somewhat suspicious of. A nice young man, Biren, someone with potential. Whether he’ll realise or squander it is something the text explores, and it gives him room to maneouvre, to become a person we can sympathise with, empathise with – even while questioning how far he’s willing to go to achieve his goals.  

While Sanda is finding strength in adversity, and Biran is treading gently in the corridors of power, Jules is something else entirely. A small time thief, mostly. A person in over their head? Quite possibly. Jules’ sections are fast paced adventure, as she tries to evade the law, as well as various shadowy forces that appear to want her and the crew she runs with, dead. I really enjoyed Jules’ sections. She’s fierce, passionate, ruthless, and a force to be reckoned with, even if she’s starting from something of a disadvantage. Still, there’s an energy driving Jules that’s infectious. And who doesn’t love a heist, evading the cops, dodging death on every corner, unravelling the threads that are bringing chaos to her life, and tracing them back to source in the finest noir tradition.  

I do each of the protagonists a disservice here with my description; they’re absolute gems, every one. Their grudges, their loves, their defeats...all of their stories will take hold of you and not let go. Each has something to add to the story, and each is more than the story they’re wrapped up in.  

Strangely, the world is part of what makes the story, and its reveals, so compelling. But I’ll say this. O’Keefe can write. There are sprawling civilisations here, diverse worlds that are ore than just caricatures of our own experience. There’s slowly simmering history behind each action, and that simmer is slowly brought to the boil as the story crackles forward. There’s a darkness of space so vastly absolute that it’ll leave you gasping, and starship interiors so wonderfully claustrophobic that you may feel your own walls getting a little closer together. The world, like the people in it, is richly detailed and convincing, its broader strokes filled with the wonder and terror of a wider world. It’s real. 

That’s Velocity Weapon. It’s whip-smart. Its characters are people. Its world is lavish with detail, rich with the grit and grime of human history. Its story is fantastic. 

So yeah, you want to read this one. Get on it.   

Fleet of Knives - Gareth L. Powell

Fleet of Knives is the second in Gareth Powell’s Embers of War series, and like its predecessor, it’s a good one. Here we have science fiction that asks some big questions, and dose so through the lens of characters we care about, in a universe filled with wonder and terror in equal measure. 

Speaking of which. That universe. It’s an interstellar polity in the aftermath of a conflict that nearly broke everyone involved. Both sides exhausted. But the end of the war, that sits on the shoulders of crew and ships who committed an atrocity to bring the end to a conflict that was reducing everything to rubble. But this isn’t that story. It’s the story of the aftermath. Those people, and their ships, live different lives now, where they’ve survived. Those people, and their ships, are paying their penance. To be sure, some take a different approach to others, but they all are marked by that experience.  

The universe, however, rolls on. Alien species meet humanity. Trade, fight, make agreements. Ignore or participate in internecine squabbles. The tapestry of this space is writ large, filled with the strange and the familiar. I have a particular soft spot for the Druff, a many-face-handed species who work and fix things and grumble and live in nests, and keep their crews close to whatever serves them for hearts, as they live a quiet, collective faith. But there’s starkly vast hulks, generation ships crossing the vast gaps between the stars. There’s broken monuments to the hubris of humanity, on a global scale. There’s intelligent AI personalities, who have absolutely no time for any of your nonsense. There’s a whole rich play happening out beyond the boards of the story, and that helps put flesh on the bones of the narrative, helps it feel alive, helps it feel real. This is a vast, unimaginable, interconnected universe – and though the characters are small within it, they are giants unto themselves. This is a space that breathes, that has history, that is showing us part of itself – but there’s so much more out there to see.

  

And onto this stage step our players. Most notorious, perhaps, is the Trouble Dog. As an aside, the name remains an absolute delight. Anyway. The Trouble Dog has gone, if not up in the world, at least sideways. Having given purpose to a fleet of alien warships, she’s now back saving lives, after a rest and refit. I’m always delighted to share the thoughts of the Trouble Dog; wry, sometimes sarcastic, driven working very hard to find a home, to keep her crew close, to keep the razor’s edge of the universe at bay whilst also being rather sharp herself. There’s an honesty to this ship, a quiet vulnerability, and a vast reservoir of courage.  You can rely on Trouble Dog  to rescue those in need, look after her crew, and to impolitely tell bullies exactly where they can tick it.  

That said, she’s ably assisted by her crew, including the Trouble Dog’s captain, haunted by her own failure to keep all of her crew alive. Here is a wonderfully drawn mixture of anxiety, stress and raw bravery, mixed with compassion. The others are similarly compelling, similarly real. The young medic, struggling to deal with the aftermath of events that left him alone, but for the crew, trying to comprehend his place in the world where he can shape his own destiny. The veteran, still scarred by older losses, looking for understanding, and looking for a fight. The engineer, just trying to use as many of its face-hands as possible to get things fixed before the human idiots get parts of the ship blown apart again. They’re all here, the survivors of the Trouble Dog, trying to shape a new life, a new meaning into their worlds, living with and paying for past sins. 

There are others of course, new and old faces. And they have the same humanity as these ones we know well. The same depth, the same grace (or otherwise). The same conflicted, troubled humanity that lets us see their goals, see the validity and truth of what shaped them, what drives them, even if we don’t agree with it. Or, if we consider the alien, the strangeness. The views that seem to fit together, but end up taking us down deep, dark holes. The difference of experience which feels like something not human, but still a person.  

I guess what I’m saying is, this is some seriously strong character work. The people, be they alien, A.I. or even humans, feel like people. They live and breathe and bleed and die and love and hope on the page, and you’ll feel their pain and their affection with each word you read.

  

Then there’s the story. I won’t spoil it, of course. But it goes interesting places. Asks inteeresting questions about the cars we wear, if they shape us, and how they do. But it also, and this is important, is a damn fun story. There’s some beautiful ballets of space combat, there’s daring rescues. There are, and I am not exaggerating, some seriously unpleasant villains. There’s conflict that makes you gasp and turn the page to see what happens next, and dialogue that will sear itself across your brain like fire in the blood. There’s chases, and escapes. Feats of daring that left my heart in my mouth. Tragedies that wrench at you, and moments of quiet triumph that make it all worthwhile.  

So yeah, Fleet of Knives. It’s a great sequel, a great work of science fiction, and I encourage everyone reading this to go catch the further adventures of Trouble Dog, preferably right away.