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    Crossover: A Cassandra Kresnov Novel
    Unavailable
    Crossover: A Cassandra Kresnov Novel
    Unavailable
    Crossover: A Cassandra Kresnov Novel
    Ebook532 pages9 hours

    Crossover: A Cassandra Kresnov Novel

    By Joel Shepherd

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Crossover is the first novel in a series which follows the adventures of Cassandra Kresnov, an artificial person, or android, created by the League, one side of an interstellar war against the more powerful, conservative Federation. Cassandra is an experimental design — more intelligent, more creative, and far more dangerous than any that have preceded her. But with her intellect come questions, and a moral awakening. She deserts the League and heads incognito into the space of her former enemy, the Federation, in search of a new life. Her chosen world is Callay, and its enormous, decadent capital metropolis of Tanusha, where the concerns of the war are literally and figuratively so many light years away. But the war between the League and the Federation was ideological as much as political, with much of that ideological dispute regarding the very existence of artificial sentience and the rules that govern its creation. Cassandra discovers that even in Tanusha, the powerful entities of this bloody conflict have wound their tentacles. Many in the League and the Federation have cause to want her dead, and Cassandra’s history, inevitably, catches up with her. Cassandra finds herself at the mercy of a society whose values preclude her own right even to exist. But her presence in Tanusha reveals other fault lines, and when Federal agents attempt to assassinate the Callayan president, she finds herself thrust into the service of her former enemies, using her lethal skills to attempt to protect her former enemies from forces beyond their ability to control. As she struggles for her place and survival in a new world, Cassandra must forge new friendships with old enemies, while attempting to confront the most disturbing and deadly realities of her own existence.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPyr
    Release dateOct 28, 2010
    ISBN9781591028062
    Unavailable
    Crossover: A Cassandra Kresnov Novel
    Author

    Joel Shepherd

    Joel Shepherd lives in Adelaide. His first novel was Crossover.

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    Reviews for Crossover

    3.5/5

    117 ratings3 reviews

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    • 4/5
      A super-powerful artificial soldier flees from the human society that created her and tries to hide with a new civilian identity on an enemy planet. However, she ends up getting caught in the middle of double- and triple-crosses involving security forces from both civilizations. Although a number of reviews have described the book as full of sex, it isn't; indeed, what little sex takes place during the plot happens during discreet fade-outs. Instead, the heart of the story is a melodrama that plays out on the interior emotional landscapes of several characters. To the extent that the book has a conceptual focus, it's on the nature of self in society -- not the philosophical question of what it means to be human, but the political question of what it means for a society to grant or deny equal rights to a being who is so fantastically physically superior but so emotionally similar to an ordinary human. I found the action sequences bland and jargon-laden. I don't care about guns, or explosions, or objects smashing together at high speed, and tended to lose focus in these sections. I liked several of the characters well enough that I'll go ahead and try the second book in this series.
    • 3/5
      Started off as a good read, but actually abandoned about 1/2 way through which is unusual for me. Retrospectively, believe the interest waned as it became more military in nature.
    • 4/5
      This book takes place a few hundred years into our future, where the known universe has split into two factions: The League and the Federation. The League is into no-limits science, such as the creation of artificial soldiers known as GIs (General Issues), whereas the Federation sticks to traditional, historic values. However, the lines are blurred when an experimental GI defects from the League to the Federation. This book is heavy on the politics of both League vs. Federation and the in-fighting within the Federation, specifically on the planet that protagonist Cassandra Kresnov flees to. The slow parts of the book, for me, were the descriptions of the sprawling city of Tanusha. Interesting but over-long. The action was excellent, with running gun battles and super-heroic feats thanks to Kresnov's artificial body. Kresnov is a likeable, honorable character, as are most of the people she meets. Overall, I enjoyed the book. It didn't blow me away, but it was a good read generally.