"For Sanda, the wound of grief was scarcely scabbed over. All she had to do was graze it with a thought to start it weeping again."

Whatever Megan E. O'Keefe puts in her books, they continue to make me stay up all night and way into the morning to finish. Her Devoured Worlds trilogy quickly not only became my favourite books read this year, but of all time, and I can already see that happening with The Protectorate trilogy as well just based off this first book.

Told in three different POVs, across different planets, ships, and even hundreds of years apart, Velocity Weapon gets going from the first page. Sanda, our first FMC, wakes up on a mysterious ship with the markings of the enemy, and with no other human onboard. The ship itself is AI, naming itself Bero, and speaks to her informing her that not only has both her home planet and the enemies been blown to pieces, but she's also been asleep for over 200 years. Alone in the world, Sanda and Bero make plans to journey to a new system to try and find other life, but of course nothing can ever go as planned. Our MMC, Biran, is doing his speech at his graduation to become a Keeper when the news comes out that his sister Sanda has died in a clash with their enemies. With his new rankings, he decides to do whatever it takes to either bring her back home, or at least find out what happened to her. When he finds out that The Protectorate, the leaders of the Keepers, are keeping secrets that could effect the life or death of Sanda, he has to demolish all his previous notions of the leaders being good, and figure out who in the ranks are his enemies and allies. Finally, we have Jules, our other FMC but from a place far far away. Living in poverty in a rundown part of her planet, Jules doesn't do the cleanest of work. When she performs a lift with her crew and finds things that she definitely shouldn't know about, things go awry and her world is flipped onto it's head.

I will be honest and say that, between all the characters, Sanda was my absolute favourite. Constantly flipping between POVs, hers was always the one I was waiting for, wanting to know more about what happened in the over 200 years she'd been gone and what she was going to do now. I loved her relationship with the Bero and Grippy, keeping each other company and sane when the worlds and people they used to know have been dead for a long long time. And don't even get me started on her and Tomas, Megan E. O'Keefe continues to be amazing with her romances.

What really keeps you turning the pages of this book though is the mystery around everything. Trying to figure out how Jules fits into the story, because she isn't even from the same planet as our two other MCS. Reading about Biran and waiting for the day you know is coming where both planets get blown to smithereens, but not knowing when, how or why it even happened. Then there's Sanda, why was she asleep for over 200 years, why did Bero pull her into his ship, what is all the research that was done on him for? All these mysteries, and yet, there's so much more than just these as you go from chapter to chapter.

I need everyone who is a sci-fi fan to not only pick up this series, but both of Megan E. O'Keefe's trilogies. She's such a phenomenal writer and storyteller. I stayed up until 7 a.m. to read this book, so I can't wait to see how much more I mess up my sleep for the second!

A pretty solid sci-fi novel, but wow I felt absolutely NOTHING for any character or events going on.