Series: The Protectorate by Megan E. O'Keefe ("Velocity Weapon")

[Joon]

This topic is for the 3/20 Buddy Read of Velocity Weapon.

Remember spoiler tags!

I've jumped the gun a bit (I'm stretched pretty thin over the next month) but I'm literally like 3% in. My immediate impressions are:
1. Oh boy, another multi-POV affair.
2. The audiobook is probably out. I can't handle another oppressively thick british accent right now for such a long book. I tried. But his high-voice for female characters is a hard no. Maybe once I'm further in and I've gotten to know the characters and the world a bit.

[Hank]

I just finished this recently (read on kindle) and will be interested to hear what you think of the mulit-POV.

[Raucous]

I picked this up a bit early as well but so far I've just read the first chapter. My thought after it was "This isn't shaping up to be a book where there will be a ton of characters to keep straight." It sounds like that doesn't last.

Agreed on the audio book - at least based on the narration sample. Too bad. Lately my chances of finishing longer books in a reasonable amount of time have been a lot higher with access to an audiobook.

Still, I'm intrigued by the start.

[Anna]

Haha, I love Joe Jameson, and will definitely be getting this on audio once the third one is out!

--

This book is the August 2021 group read, official threads here:

Velocity Weapon >> First impressions | Final thoughts

[Joon]

Hank wrote: "I just finished this recently (read on kindle) and will be interested to hear what you think of the mulit-POV."

I really hope it converts me because right now I'm pretty down on the format. Earlier this year I read The First Sister which had three POVs and I really only liked one of them, so it was a bit of a slog. (Though that said, at least the audio book had different readers for each POV, unlike this book.)

Raucous wrote: "Lately my chances of finishing longer books in a reasonable amount of time have been a lot higher with access to an audiobook."

This for sure. Ancestral Night, a 500 page book (17 hour audio), still took me ten days with a good amount of listening during work. (It also had a narrator with a heavy british accent, which is why I'm a bit fatigued with them right now lol.)

This book is even longer. (540+ pages, 18+ hour audio).

[MadProfessah]

I love this series!! The characters are very diverse and the story Is VERY INTERESTING!

[Eva]

I'm excited for this one! Thanks for the recommendation, MP, I hope I'll love it as much as you did. It does sound right up my alley. The first chapter was riveting.

[Bonnie]

Are you guys thinking of particular books with multiple POVs? Or you don't always like them?
For me, I've read so much in first-person this year, it's a relief not to be inside somebody's head.

What does "Prime" refer to? (view spoiler)[Sandra says Ada Prime, but the map say the dwarf planet's name is Ada. Is Prime like the people, or the people who work on Gates? Sometimes they say Primes, is it a nationality, and if so where is the Capitol? Their star looks like Cronus on the map. (hide spoiler)]

Through Chapter 8. (view spoiler)[Sucks that in 1700 years they can not grow limbs! At the beginning I figured the ship had her in a tank, it could cultivate a leg for her. And attach it. (hide spoiler)]

[Joon]

Bonnie wrote: "What does "Prime" refer to?"

I'm only about as far as you are but (view spoiler)[It is definitely a bit confusing. "Ada" for sure refers to the planet itself. "Prime" seems to refer to the people who live on and around that planet, including Sanda/Biran. And "Ada Prime" just seems to refer to that collective; the people and the planet (and the space station, gate, etc.)

As for the "Capitol" my impression was that was Keep Station, orbiting Ada. (hide spoiler)]

[Joon]

I'm giving the audiobook another shot, and I'm determined to stick it out.

But I'm going to have some things to say.

I'm looking at you, Bero.

[Hank]

@Bonnie (view spoiler)[ I think that regrowing the leg is possible, just expensive and not available on the ship but I might be remembering wrong (hide spoiler)]

I liked 2/3 of the POVs and will love to see which ones everyone liked and did not.

[Joon]

Hank wrote: "@Bonnie [spoilers removed]
."

(view spoiler)[Yes, Bero specifically said the ship didn't have the resources to do it, but the implication was that the medical technology did exist to do something to that effect (I believe the exact term was "bioengineering"). (hide spoiler)]

[Bonnie]

Ah, I did miss this line from Chapter 1:
(view spoiler)[Handing a smartship over to her superiors would win her accolades enough to last a lifetime. Could even win her a fresh new leg. (hide spoiler)]

Through Chapter 30:
(view spoiler)[I enjoy the suspense of Sanda not knowing if Tomas is good or bad/ trustworthy or not, and arguing with herself about it. Keeps me guessing by playing it both ways!

Looks like some people made it off Ada, since they were planning an Exodus.

The "Primes" business still a little confusing, though we now know they are elsewhere because that High Protectorate lady (let me get her name: Prime Director of the Keepers, Malkia Rehema Okonkwo) showed up. It was unclear where she was -- if she was in another solar system they would not be able to communicate with video call, would they?
Well, I think now that the author is dribbling "Prime" info out on purpose, it's not bad writing or me just not getting it. So I will be patient.
(hide spoiler)]

[MadProfessah]

Where’s the spoilers ok thread??

[Bonnie]

MadProfessah wrote: "Where’s the spoilers ok thread??"
Hi,
It's a Buddy Read not a monthly /group book, so this is the only thread

[Joon]

I'm sorry, the narrator's voice for Bero is the worst thing I've ever heard.

You can't convince me that he didn't record this voice while pinching his own nose.

[Hank]

Ha! Glad I actually read this one then :)

[Bonnie]

Chapter 33-38
(view spoiler)[

Mind blown.
MIND BLOWN
{$$$ explosion sound $$$}
(hide spoiler)]

[Bonnie]

Chapter 82
(view spoiler)[
“Hey, lass"
"Aye, the lad’s here.”
Apparently Sandra has woken up to find Dad Graham turned into a leprechaun
(hide spoiler)]

Ending
(view spoiler)[
Well, I was warned by Hank. It's not even a cliffhanger, it's a book split into two books. CHOP. To find out what happens to Jules and Lolla in the Atrux system, and what the deal is with rejuvenation / long life, possibly Keeper Lavaux and Keeper Kenwick (aka The Head on Bero), will have to read the next book!
(hide spoiler)]

Multiple Points of View
(view spoiler)[I didn't realize until almost the end, that in addition to the three main POVS--Sanda, Biran and Jules--we also had the newscast lady who helped Biran, Callie Mera, and the tech billionaire on Earth, Alexandra Halston, who funded research for the FTL tech. So five all together.

I didn't mind them. I think I mentioned earlier that it feels like I have read so much First Person recently -- it is a relief not to be inside somebody's head. I figured we would eventually see how Jules' POV connected to the main stories in the Cronus system. For a while I thought she might be Biran's descendant.
(hide spoiler)]

[Bonnie]

Hank wrote: "I liked 2/3 of the POVs and will love to see which ones everyone liked and did not."

I figured I could figure out which POV you did not like, but didn't:
(view spoiler)[
Sanda's cussing was weird; she did not always seem like a gunnery sergeant (i would know this how?!); and the bits with Tomas late in the book could have better-- that was probably not it though.
Jules' narrative took so long to connect with the others; even when it did near the end, something with Wraith/Keeper tech it is still not clear how; that story was conventional like we have read heist gangs with cyber genius friends before.
Biran's political rise and maneuvering *should* have been my favorite, but was not. I was weirdly bored sometimes. The physical descriptions and political machinations and Keepers' villainy was off somehow. In Stephen R. Donaldson's Gap Cycle / C.J. Cherryh's Foreigner series the political wiles are my favorite part but not here.
(hide spoiler)]

I think I will continue and read the next book though!

[Joon]

Through Chapter 19:
(view spoiler)[So the first main problem I'm having is that I'm still uncertain what Sanda's plan is. If the book explained why she's trying to get to Atrux (or in fact what it even is), then I missed it. Admittedly, this is likely, because I'm finding the audiobook narration so awful that I certainly zoned out a number of times.

And I'm sorry, but it really is awful. I know someone else said they like this narrator, and maybe he's done good work on other books, but this one is arguably the worst one I've ever attempted to listen to. His attempt to give everyone a wildly distinct voice just makes everyone sound like a cartoon character. And I acknowledge that this disappointment is my own. The reviews on Audible for the performance are mostly favorable. But I'm done. Like, it's making me mad. It's making me dislike characters I know I'm supposed to like.

As for the book itself, I'm already getting the feeling that Biran's POV will be my least favorite. By far. Maybe not his fault, he's got a boring job and he's surrounded by boring people and so far he's just a boring guy. I expected Sanda's to be the most interesting, though so far as I said I have no idea where that is going. I may have to skip back a bit and reread. Jules' story is getting much more interesting, though so far there's just so little of it. I'm assuming the stuff in the vial she broke was not some drug but rather some sort of...I dunno, techno-parasite? Hopefully it turns her into a badass. Dunno why, but I've just decided that's what I need out of this story. (hide spoiler)]

[Joon]

Top Three Worst Voices From the Audiobook Through Chapter 25:
(view spoiler)[
3. Okonkwo - Remember those two trade federation aliens at the beginning of Phantom Menace with the ridiculous and offensive mock-Japanese accents? Yeah, so do I. And so does the narrator of this book, apparently. Fortunately it doesn't look like this character is in the book much at all.
2. Lavaux - This is the one I was thinking of when I said they sound like cartoon characters. This over-the-top but phony sounding French accent is painful to listen to. This is the voice Hollywood gives to the French villain being played by an American.
1. Bero - Again, I am positive he played this voice simply by pinching his nose. There is a point where Bero raises his voice and this becomes even more obvious. I don't understand who let that slide. Don't audiobooks have producers? Or at least someone who listens to them before they're published? (hide spoiler)]

[Bonnie]

If we are channeling The Phantom Menace things are grim indeed. The only thing worse might be dialog from Attack of the Clones.

[Joon]

Also I'm getting a better understanding of "Prime" vs. "Ada".

(very minor spoilers)
(view spoiler)[I should have picked up on this sooner, but the Primes are spread throughout (the galaxy, I guess?). Ada (the planet) is where they live(d) in this system, but they live in other systems as well, and Atrux is one of those, and evidently the closest, though still wildly far away. (Think it said it would take 75 years to get there going 8% the speed of light or however fast Bero goes, since the gate is wrecked). (hide spoiler)]

[Joon]

Bonnie wrote: "If we are channeling The Phantom Menace things are grim indeed. The only thing worse might be dialog from Attack of the Clones."

The dialogue is fine. The book itself is fine, which is what really bothers me about the narration. It's making me like the book less.

But I just have to keep trying to make the audiobook work if I want to finish this in a reasonable amount of time. (Basically by the end of the month if I want to keep my schedule).

I'm hoping I can just get used to the voices and stop thinking about them. I also feel bad that like 80% of what I've had to say in this topic so far is me whining about the audiobook lol.

[Bonnie]

Answer to ^^
(view spoiler)[Yeah, that's why she says to go to Atrux, because there's nothing left in their system (Kronux? or something like that) and it's the closest inhabited.
I do think they should at least check for some more life pods, you know? Even if the odds are low.
(hide spoiler)]

[Joon]

Chapter 35.

Oof.

(view spoiler)[So there was a plot twist that was an absolute carbon copy of one I'd read in another book (if you've read it as well, you know the one I'm talking about), and I ain't even mad, because it was awesome the first time, and it was awesome here.

(On the other hand, it dumps the premise I'd been looking forward to seeing play out from page one.)

(Also, I'm like 50% done and the Jules storyline has barely gotten started and still hasn't even a vague connection to the rest of the story.)

Remains to be seen WHY (I'm not even done with the chapter), but I will say I dodged a heck of a bullet; the table of contents in the book itself doesn't include the chapter names, but the TOC in the audiobook DOES. So if you happen to peruse it, or you need to find your place because Whispersync continues to be a fussy garbage fire, you could actually sort of spoil it. (Or you might think one of the main characters bites it real early in the book). Either way, I'm glad I didn't really look at the audiobook TOC. (hide spoiler)]

[Joon]

Finished.

Thoughts.

(view spoiler)[
1. As first-books-in-trilogies go, it was slightly more satisfying than Book of Koli was (which it wasn't).

There were a few out-of-nowhere new gimmicks (The Magic Lavauxes, Rainier and Keeper), but virtually nothing in the way of answered questions. I like Book Ones to answer a big mystery while introducing an even bigger one, but this one answered NOTHING. It just provided a steady stream of questions, and then ended.

2. Jules' entire storyline in this book was terrible. As small as it was in the overall story, it was still mostly her flailing. She found that weird stuff (fka "Wraith Mother"), it appeared to infect her, then virtually nothing happened with it for the rest of the book, and then in her last chapter she's like "oh yeah I guess I'm not tired much anymore". I feel like her role should have either been expanded or removed entirely and left to be introduced in book two. Even the minor revelation that her story took place in another system fizzled for me because I legit wasn't sure I wasn't supposed to have already known that.

3. Sanda repeatedly made some dumb-as-hell decisions. Like, constantly. Just about everything she did in this book was the exact wrong thing to do. "Oh hey Sanda, here's a shiny new leg from that creepy guy you definitely don't trust, and DON'T WORRY IT'S FOR SURE NOT BUGGED OR ANYTHING, but make sure to bring it with you when you try to rescue Starship Stockholm Syndrome which it is painfully obvious to everyone you will do."

4. At the end of the book, I'm just left with an empty feeling of not really knowing what the overall story is ABOUT. There's a big scary weapon, but oh wait, there's probably an even bigger scarier weapon out there somewhere, MAYBE, and there's this weird drug in a shady lab that infects a person and then does nothing but make her not need band-aids anymore, and this one dude with a terminator skeleton married a spaceship and gave it multiple lady bodies, and the other girl has coordinates in her skull SHE GUESSES that lead who the hell knows what or where but she's definitely not gonna go there for a while so sit tight, and finally the other guy is told by ALL his bosses that he's fired and prolly gonna be executed, and he's just like "nah."

I mean don't get me wrong. I'm definitely reading the next book. But I wanted this one, which was such a LONG book, to be more.

5. I've said my piece about the audiobook. I did wind up abandoning it (which I suppose is a bit ironic considering that Bero-gotchyer-nose is largely absent from the last quarter of the book.)
(hide spoiler)]


Also, re: the multiple POV's: (view spoiler)[Though I still didn't like him as a character, for obvious reasons, Biran's POV improved, mostly because it effectively merged with Sanda's, and also a bit because it became obvious that the Keepers (or at least some of them, and definitely one of them) were shaping up to be the real villains of the story.

Sanda and Jules have all the action scenes, but in terms of moving the story forward, Jules accomplishes nothing at all, and Sanda takes a step back for every step forward. (hide spoiler)]

[Raucous]

Hank wrote: "... I liked 2/3 of the POVs and will love to see which ones everyone liked and did not."

This book is helping me remember that I'm not a fan of frequent POV shifts. (view spoiler)[There always seems to be one that I don't like and I tend to wander off to something else when the book switches to that POV. Here it's Biran. I'm not finding him a very interesting or sympathetic character. The early "golden boy" trope didn't help. Maybe it will improve later (I'm only about 25% of the way through). Sanda's been my favorite so far. I've been looking forward to her story. I haven't seen much of Jules yet but her segments seem fine so far. (hide spoiler)]

Not related to this book, but it reminds me of one with a similar structure that I read decades ago. At some point I got tired of the switching and just read the POV that I was enjoying all the way to the end, skipping the rest. I think that it was actually an improvement. So... I have opinions.

[Bonnie]

Joon wrote: Chapter 35.
(view spoiler)[
Oof.
So there was a plot twist that was an absolute carbon copy of one I'd read in another book (if you've read it as well, you know the one I'm talking about), and I ain't even mad, because it was awesome the first time, and it was awesome here."

I have Temptation to ask the name of the other book but I am suppressing it, because that would ruin it. Even if years go by!

I did not wholly believe it until I got to Chapter 38 and saw the heading with changed date. (hide spoiler)]

So Hank, what was behind your Door Number Three? One of the POVs you definitely did not like (I read your review too). Was it Boring Biran, whose political intrigue was not intriguing enough? Or Jumbled Jules, whose story did not really connect with the other stories?

I am willing to read the next book although it could be a month or two yet before I get to it.

[Joon]

Bonnie wrote: "I have Temptation to ask the name of the other book but I am suppressing it, because that would ruin it. Even if years go by!"

Well this is awkward, because according to your bookshelf, you've read it. Even gave it four stars!

I will clarify one thing though: (view spoiler)[The date change itself was not the twist I was referring to. I was more referring to the helmet. (hide spoiler)]