Book Review: Crossover by Joel Shepherd

This is the first in what I assume to be a series of Cassandra Kresnov books. I received this as a present (and something of an intervention against my then habit of only reading books on writing) and dove into it eagerly. It had won awards in Australia and was a topic of much talk at the 2006 WorldCON.

The blurbs suggested it was the greatest android novel since Philip Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? It shaped up like any number of ghost-in-the-shell stories as we follow Cassandra's (an android) attempts to show that she is a being worthy of life and freedom despite her mechanical nature.

I found myself disappointed. The first hundred or so pages had little action and all seemed designed to create a sense of ennui (or so I'm told). It didn't work for me. It served to bore me and make reading the book more a chore than an enjoyable pastime. What I noticed most in these first pages was that Cassandra Kresnov spent most of her time naked and seeking sex with human men (and sometimes women). The rest of the story became a string of emotionless gunfights and action sequences, only vaguely connected by plot.

The major failing of this book was that it never actually evoked any emotion other than boredom (and maybe vague distaste) in me. I never related to any of the characters because they never showed any real emotions. At the end of Act 2, for a moment, I thought we would have a scene that made the whole book worthwhile. One of Cassandra's friends dies, and she begins to emote. The emotional tension builds, and just before it reaches a point where it would pierce the most cynical heart Cassandra reminds herself of her mission and launches off into Act 3, leaving me to deal with the emotional fizzle and more angry than anything else.