Chaos Vector is the second book in the space opera series called The Protectorate written by Megan O’Keefe; it is the sequel to Velocity Weapon. The world-building in Velocity Weapon and Chaos Vector is impeccable; these books are set in the Thirty-Fourth Century where humans have inhabited multiple star systems due to the existence of Casimir Gates that allow faster-than-light travel. The biggest secret in the inhabited universe is the technology that is used in the gates, which are created and controlled by Prime government. One of the interesting features of the first book was the inclusion of multiple time lines, one of which described how Alexandra Hallston, the founder of Prime Technologies back in the Twenty-First century, came to discover gate technology. The inclusion of vignettes following Hallston's story continues in the second book and is clearly going to be a source of major surprises about the foundations of Prime society as the series goes forward.
The main characters in The Protectorate books are Sanda Greeve and her brother Biran. When we meet Sanda she is in the Prime military, on active duty in an ongoing war between Ada Prime and Icarian, a neighboring system. In the first book, Sanda was captured by enemy forces and injured; she wakes up from a medically induced coma and she’s had her left leg amputated below the left knee. It turns out that her captor was actually an Icarion super-weapon, an AI-enabled warship named The Light of Berossus that has speed and weapon capabilities far exceeding anything Prime possesses. Sanda eventually bonds with the intelligence in control (which she calls Bero) and at the end of Velocity Weapon she has been reunited with Biran safely at home while Bero disappears into the void to try and learn more about his creators.
Biran is Speaker of the Keepers of Ada Prime. A Keeper is someone who has been granted with the near-sacred responsibility of keeping a portion of the knowledge of how Casimir Gates work securely in a microchip embedded in their brain. Keepers are the elite of the elite in Prime society. They go through a number of aptitude tests in order to be admitted to an academy from which future Keepers are selected. Access to any information/knowledge about specific technologies that could conceivably be used to discover how gates work is harshly regulated and only Keepers can access it. As Speaker, Biran is the mouthpiece for the Protectorate, which is the small group of Keepers who are tasked with making executive decisions for the Prime government. (One small quibble with the books is that they really do not make it clear how the government of Prime works—are there terms for the Speakers on the Protectorate? How exactly are they selected? Mundane but important details like this are necessary to give the reader a sense of the politics of Prime and are generally missing, or not repeated frequently enough that I can’t remember them.)
The plot(s) of both books are extremely complex, and the stories are filled with multiple jaw-dropping reveals and twists. I don’t want to reveal or spoil any of these so instead I will discuss some other highlights of the books which may help explain why I am so enamored with them.
First, the characters of Sanda and Biran are presented with exquisite nuance and well-defined clarity. Sanda is a kick-ass older sister who finds herself in a bewildering series of deathly dangerous situations and constantly makes the right choice. Biran is in a similarly bewildering thicket of political alliances which he has to successfully navigate. Sadly, he doesn’t always make the right choice. But by giving the reader access to their inner thoughts we are always right there with Sanda and Biran as they wend their way through the treacherous plot. That makes for a tremendously exciting reading experience.
Second, the prominence of diversity in both books is extremely attractive and rewarding to me. Biran and Sanda were raised by a gay male couple and clearly they both love both their dads. With one leg Sanda is disabled (or the better term would probably “differently abled”) and having a hero in an action-packed military sci-fi story who also needs a wheelchair sometimes to get around and regular worries about her prosthesis is definitely unusual, but O’Keefe makes it work, because Sanda is awesome! She is clearly heterosexual, and we thought Biran was too, until the later chapters of Chaos Vector make it clear he’s also attracted to guys. (Yay!) Although there's no sexual scenes in the books, remember we do have constant access to Sanda's and Biran's inner thoughts, so.... In addition to the diverse main characters there is a major supporting character named Mx. Arden Wyke who has near-legendary computer hacking skills and is ‘enby’ (non-binary) and referred to by the pronouns them/they/theirs seamlessly. Another major supporting character is revealed to be an ex-boyfriend of one of Sanda’s dads. The author also makes it clear that many/most of the characters would not be racialized as White in our contemporary social context. The author goes out of her way to mention that the ancestors of most of the inhabitants of Ada Prime are from Ecuador, which is apparently where the first space elevator was constructed on Earth a millennium before, which explains why most people on Ada have brown skin and very dark hair. The diversity of the characters is an integral, impressive and important aspect of these books.
Third, the technological details of the Prime universe are believable and very cool. One incredibly important feature of science fiction to me is the realistic presentation of technological advancements. They should be incredible but also somewhat plausible. (Yes I know faster than light travel is not possible but gates/wormholes are at least theorized.) O’Keefe does a good job of presenting the technology of the 34th century in a way that seems realistic. The society has aspects which seem like magic to us, but there are still disparities in status, wealth and power among different sets of people. Those divides do not seem to be based on race or gender but they do seem to be related to one’s birth circumstances.
Overall, Chaos Vector is an impressively strong sequel to Velocity Weapon and one of the best space opera books I have read in several years. If you like the work of Peter Hamilton, Alastair Reynolds, Richard Morgan and Arkady Martine, I’m very confident that Megan O’Keefe’s Protectorate series will put a smile on your face and a gleam in your eye, it did for me!
Title: Chaos Vector.
Author: Megan O'Keefe .
Page Length: 416 pages.
Format: Kindle.
Publisher: Orbit.
Date Published: July 28, 2020.
Date Read: December 25, 2020.
OVERALL GRADE: A (4.0/4.0).
PLOT: A.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A+.
WRITING: A.
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