Customer Reviews

Crossover (Cassandra Kresnov Novels)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Cassandra Kresnov -- or April Cassidy, as she'd like to be known, on
Callay -- is a high-grade replicant, a GI super-soldier of the League.
Well, ex-League now, or so she devoutly hopes. Ordinary GI's --
artificial humans, with enhanced strength and reflexes -- aren't all
that smart, it turns out. Cassandra is an experiment -- what if we
make a GI who's really *human*, as best we can, and see what
happens.....

What happens is, Cassandra wants out....

This is an absorbing exploration of what it means to be human, as seen
through the eyes of a defecting super-soldier, who's really, really
sick of war, and just wants to settle down, get a job, get a *life*
-- and have sex. *Lots* of sex. Cassandra "liked sex when she was
happy, and sex when she was sad, and, most particularly, sex when she
was uptight or frustrated."

What she gets, instead, is disassembly by agents of the FIA, a last
minute rescue by the CSA, a bogged-down court-case and a political
hardball-match. With Sandy as the football. The impasse is broken when
Dark Star, her old League outfit, raids Callay to assassinate their
President. By chance, Sandy is nearby, and saves the President's life.
Which is, after all, a time-tested way to make an ally....

Influences: well, the Federation vs. League is pretty clearly
Cherryh's Union vs. Alliance, though a shorter-span conflict and less
subtly done. The political setup is quite deft, really, particularly
for a first novel -- in fact, this is an amazingly accomplished first
novel -- a first-rate novel, period. Sandy herself -- well, ol' Bob's
FRIDAY certainly comes to mind.

Shepherd is a fine storyteller, and I got misty-eyed more than once
over the hard row Cassandra K. has to hoe. Highly recommended. First
of a trilogy, and I'll be reading on. This one, thankfully, is nicely
self-contained. PYR is to be commended for bringing this 1999-2001
Australian novel to US readers.

PYR is to be faulted for failing to wield an editor's blue pencil on
Crossover. At 457 pp., it would have benefitted from cutting by (say)
100 pages, and would have been a tighter and better book. You'll have
to do the cutting, mentally, yourself. Sigh.

Happy reading--
Peter D. Tillman

This was a great book! The other reviews cover the plot well and point out the stylistic flaws well. I don't want to get as detailed. If you've read Heinlein's Friday then I think you'll appreciate this book. Our main character is cool, she's indestructible, she's clever, witty and likes to engage in a lot of sexual activity (read *ultimate male fantasy*). I found the sexual proclivity, prowess and talent of this android a little heavy handed but hey, it's science fiction and male authored. She's a little too perfect. There is nothing about her that really sets up the debate about her existence unless it is her very perfection but that wouldn't apply to all GIs as it does in the novel. The previous review mentioned the errors and stylistic flaws in the first chapter and I would concur. It made me a little nervous as I bought the book based on Amazon reviews. It turned out alright though. Slog through the first chapter, read it and know that the author is trying to set the scene, describe his heroine, and familiarize the reader with the city.

The techno babble distanced one from the story a bit; I didn't get enough explanation to really make it clear. Some of the detail and description was gratuitous and superfluous but at times, really adding to the story.
I like that some questions were left unanswered. It wasn't a neatly packaged story. It left room for thought.

Overall I enjoyed the book, was eager to return to it and would recommend it to any sci-fi lover. I loved the multi-ethnic cast! I loved that the commanders and sympathetic characters were female! Good show, Mr. Shepard!

I think the bold print on the back of the book says it best:

MEET CASSANDRA KRESNOV. SOLDIER. LOVER. FIGHTER. PASSIONATE. COMPLETELY ARTIFICIAL.

There's a lot to like in Joel Shepherd's debut novel. I'd say it's a cross between the television shows Alias and the new Battlestar Galactica, but that would be simplifying it a bit, despite the similar elements. This book is a political, science fictional thriller with a close examination on what truly makes a person human. And there's plenty of intricate setting detail, as well as a multi-ethnic cast that should intrigue anyone reading.

One of the most appealing aspects to this book, for me personally, was the characterization of Cassandra Kresnov, Vanessa Rice, and the human relationships that played out, especially between these two women. Shepherd has a knack for capturing the human spirit--there are pages when the naturalness of the dialogue just bleeds off the page. Shepherd also has a knack for humor and creating individual character voices.

Cassandra is certainly sympathetic. Despite the fact she's synthetically made, and the most dangerous GI ever built (a hunter-killer model), this is a woman who is seeking what it means to live a normal life and to enjoy life's many pleasures. And even when her past catches up with her, and she's forced back into a role that she was created for, Cassandra remains the strongest and most sympathetic character in the book. Her story is definitely the most fascinating, her emotions the ones that grabbed me the most. In fact, I personally wish this book had been written solely from her point of view. But that would've been incredibly difficult due to the scope of the story and the fact that there are some scenes where her point of view wouldn't be reliable.

There's also some interesting science fictional world-building to this. Example: Vanessa is a woman who alternates between a heterosexual cycle and a homosexual cycle every five years. That one detail is wonderfully intriguing and telling about the future in which these characters live. I also liked how, despite the advanced technology of this planet, that there are still "holdovers," like paperback books. I don't care about the logic of this, because Shepherd sets up political systems where, according to one ideology, history and culture is welcomed and not shunned in the face of increasingly advanced technology.

I did have some stylistic issues with this, some of them being indicative of a debut writer: there's lots of telling, lots of info-dumping (though I really don't know how on earth you can convey so much info by showing, because that'd make the book twice as long), an excessive use of pronouns instead of names and an excessive use of fragments, the latter which I normally like but had a problem with here. Also, in the first chapter, we get the things that workshop-powers-that-be say writers should never do: open a story with someone waking up, and describing that individual via use of a mirror. Oops? Clearly, these aren't hard and fast rules, cause after all, plenty of writers do this and they, like Shepherd, are published. But the first chapter was a bit slow, and while it sets up the world and a nice contrast for what Cassandra is trying to do with her life, there could've been more exciting ways to start the piece. Oh well. Once you get past the first chapter, the book moves at a good pace, and I'll note that chapter two is not for the squeamish. :)

So despite my stylistic issues, the book was a fun, easy read. Something I can definitely recommend to people (if you like fast-paced, complex politics and technologies with a human core for stories, you'll like this), and I look forward to reading the next book. This is a promising start to what could be a really fun series. And I think that now that Shepherd has his world and characters under his belt, we're going to see some interesting stuff in the second book.

I've always been a sucker for the 'super powered commando' stories ever since I read The Plague of Demons ... I can still remember the acronym PAPA 'power assisted personal armament'. Thus the Cobra stories and The Path of The Fury are favorites too. This book and its two sequals are a very nice addition to the sub-genre.

The twist of the heroine being a totally artificial being allows Shepherd to revisit the descrimination themes in Cobra from a different point of view. I think he handles them and the other moral questions that the mere existance of his heroine provokes with a nice light hand.

He also does a good job envisioning a lifestyle where everyone is linked to the 'web' all the time.

Bottom line: The action sequences rock ... and the characters are cool ... what more do you need?

Australian author Joel Shepherd came to my attention via his excellent current fantasy series, A TRIAL OF BLOOD AND STEEL, which I was so impressed by that I decided to check out his earlier novels. Crossover is the first novel in his CASSANDRA KRESNOV trilogy, and was also his first published book, back in 2001 in Australia. The series is now also in print in the US thanks to Pyr, with lovely and evocative cover illustrations by Stephen Martiniere.

The story revolves around Cassandra (Sandy) Kresnov, a synthetic person: to the naked eye she looks like a normal person, but she's been artificially created by the League to fight in their war against the Federation. She's also the most advanced type of her kind: not only considerably stronger and more intelligent than a normal person, but also gifted with the ability to think laterally, which has given her a more human-like psyche -- a conscience, if you will. After deserting the League, Sandy is trying to settle down in the Federation, but she soon discovers that it's just as impossible to abandon her prior life as it is to ignore who -- and what -- she is.

Crossover is a great example of intelligent, well-written science fiction. Joel Shepherd has created a fascinating multi-dimensional heroine in Cassandra. While many people don't accept her for what she is, whether because of her League origins or because of the simple fact that she's different, her advanced intelligence gives her many of the same traits and drives that regular humans have. At the same time, she is so much more advanced than most other synthetics that she's never fully connected with them either, and despite forming strong emotional and physical bonds with them, they regard her more with worship than love.

Crossover is set entirely in Tanusha, the capital city of Callay, in the Federation. Joel Shepherd does an excellent job describing this fascinating metropolis, and sets some truly riveting action scenes in it -- a few rank with the best work of action experts like Peter F. Hamilton. The story is set entirely in the Federation and we get a solid idea of the differences between Federation and League because, just like in his fantasy series, the author doesn't shy away from focusing in considerable depth on the political structures and values of his fictional societies. Some readers may not be as enthused with this level of detail: it noticably slows the story down a few times and also sneaks into some of the dialogue, with the occasional instance of two characters delivering paragraph-length lectures to each other. However, providing this level of detail serves the dual purpose of making the fictional world more "real" and lending considerable depth to the differences between the two opposing sides.

Cassandra is joined by a fairly large cast of side-characters, some of whom are better realized (e.g., Vanessa Rice, the executive-turned-SWAT-agent) than others. Especially some of the government officials started to blend together a bit for me, and some minor characters were introduced so briefly and had such similar names than I found it hard to keep track of them. Still, the plot moves along at such a fast pace that it's not a huge problem if you're not entirely sure which SWAT agent made which joke before, and the main characters are always clearly defined.

All in all, Crossover is an intelligent page-turner with a fascinating protagonist, a well-realized world and some of the most exciting action scenes I've read in years. While the concept of an artificial person with more human emotions and intelligence is nothing new, Joel Shepherd has given it a memorable new face with Cassandra Kresnov. I genuinely look forward to finding out how her story continues in Breakaway, the second novel in the series.

As a reader who just embraced the science fiction literature genre I must say that this book was exactly what I was looking for. It feels like it's heavily inspired by Philip K Dick's "Do androids dream of electric sheep?" and Masamune Shirow's manga "Ghost in the shell". While it contains a lot of action, what really gets to you is the depth of the character Cassandra and her search for a more peaceful meaning and a purpouse to her "existance". The strongest impressions I got out of the book was sorrow, empathy and compassion for it's main character. Crossover makes the reader think about our human values and the moral judgements we make while trying to explore humanity and what being human really means. As a debut from Mr. Joel Shepherd this book really impresses and the complaints that some se, i find unexistant since the the story is about a "machine" trying to define humanity and behave like a human. It's not a story entirely about action so the depth and the some times slow pacing is what makes it such a good read, personally i would have liked even more depth, but this is just the first of a trilogy so there is room for further thought in the following books which you will read after reading Crossover.

3.75 stars (I want to round up)

The incident described on the jacket cover--the attempted assassination of the president--occurs about one-third of the way through this 456-page book, and the denouement begins about two-thirds of the way through. Yes, there's a lot of backing and filling, descriptive passages, information about what the characters are thinking, and mini-histories of the two contending political factions involved here. So all in all, this time when I state that the book could be cut, I shall not throw up my hands in despair and intone: "but where?" I know exactly where.

For starters, the extraneous passages about Cassandra's sex life can go. (And I'm no prude; they just don't matter!) And there should be more show and less tell. And we don't need descriptions of every street and every shop and every mall and every museum Cassandra passes by. But since they're here, admire them. They are done well. Mr. Shepherd is a craftsman with words. The writing is very smooth indeed.

And so, yes, the book begins quietly. April Cassidy wakes up in a hotel room in the city of Tanusha on the planet Callay and goes on a job interview. Before long, though, the action starts, and we learn she's a GI: an artificial human created by the tech-oriented League which is now in Cold War (it had once been hot) with the conservative Federation. Callay tries to stay neutral and has ties to both.

When "April" is rescued by SWAT Lt. Vanessa Rice from a Federation intel service kidnap, in which the agents attempt to steal her data base and presumably get one up on the League, she tells the authorities she wants to defect, and that her real name is Cassandra Kresnov. But the politicians in charge don't know what to do with her and keep her drugged and shackled. (If they didn't drug her, she of the super-strength would be able to escape from the shackles--thems is the rule of the book.) And, at last, now the League attempts to assassinate the president (with a squad of GIs like Cassandra but not nearly so advanced), Cassandra saves the day, and then the main action starts, as the President frees her to join Callay's intelligence service. Her mission is to find the bad guys who tried to mess with her. Since this is the first of three, it's no spoiler to say that of course she succeeds, but at tremendous cost, which is Mr. Shepherd's point.

Cassandra and Vanessa, Ibrahim (the leader of Callay's intel agency), and an old compadre she meets during her mission, are sketched out well. As for the others, most of what we learn about them is what their original ethnic origins were back on Earth. And indeed, Mr. Shepherd makes so little of the "minor" details of space travel (how did it develop? any aliens met along the way?) that the author would have been better advised to have set the whole thing, not 500 years in the future, but say 100, and with the two competing factions located in different nation-states of this planet. Still, there's enough good stuff here to make me look forward to reading the next two books in the trilogy.

Notes and Asides: Yes, Ms. Grundy taught you all not to use sentence fragments. But Mr. Shepherd uses them deliberately. For emphasis. Or to enhance the action. Whatevs.

I liked this as an introductory novel. After reading it I thought it must be the second novel in the series. Turns out it isn't. All the memories and background in this one were just that, not references to a novel I missed. It was action-packed and had some interesting viewpoints. One was referenced by some of the other reviewers: Cassandra's sexuality. Unlike the other reviewers, however, I did not find it offensive or a natural result of the male fantasy of a male author. I instead thought it helped highlight Cassandra's fundamental difference from the humans among whom she lives and thereby highlighted the tension of her existence. Sex for its own sake can be distracting, but sex as a difference between humans and GIs supports the plot. Perhaps our own comments about it show that the author picked a good way to show how different the novel's GIs are. One thing about it did annoy me: the frequent use of sentence fragments. This may sound like a small quibble, but it occurs so frequently in the book that I often had to re-read paragraphs to understand what was being said. Textbooks can require slow reading and re-reading, but action novels should be moving forward.

Joel Shepherd's Cassandra Kresnov Novels are very entertaining reads and are some of my favorite Scifi novels. Joel Shepherd creates a world that is realistic and plausible that allows the reader to become immersed in the world immediately without stumbling over a tide of technical information.

Shepherd does a great job at fleshing out his characters. He does this so well that it feels like the characters are jumping out of the pages, and when the characters go through emotional changes, you are sucked in for the ride. This especially appeals to me because I love Scifi elements but feel that a good amount of authors get lost in their worlds, which leaves many of their characters hard to empathize with because they don't feel authentic, and this is one trap that Shepherd dodges masterfully. He also does an amazing job of creating a world rich with culture and politics, and though sometimes there is a decent amount of information, you will never get lost or confused in the details.

The only slight error that I would say is in this first novel, is the first chapter. When I first picked up the novel, the first chapter failed to completely suck me into the story, I was wondering what exactly was going on and where the plot was going, but as soon as you get to the second chapter, the book sucks you in and you don't want to put it down. And when I reread the first chapter it reads fine since I am already aware of the plot and surroundings.

So overall if your into a Scifi setting, with human characters that are believable, and that you can fall in love with, this is the book for you.

Excellent read by a fairly new talent. Science Fiction fans who love character development and a fast ride will love this series. I've read all three books in the series and was sad to see it come to an end. All three books are fast reads and very enjoyable!!