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Crossover (Cassandra Kresnov #1)

3.83 of 5 stars 3.83 · rating details · 553 ratings · 47 reviews

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 in...more

Paperback, 459 pages

Published August 1st 2006 by Pyr (first published 2001)

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May 27, 2008 Jim rated it 3 of 5 stars

Fairly smart science fiction (cyberpunk-ish) from Australia. An artificially intelligent female super soldier android goes AWOL to try and live a non-military life. Of course there's no point in populating a science fiction novel with super soldiers if you're not going to bring on the action, so it is inevitable that Shepherd does so. But he is not impatient about it, taking a fair bit of time to set up his far future conflict between "rationalist" realpolitik-nics on one side and mildly anti-te...more

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May 08, 2012 Brian Steele rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: adventure, politics, scifi

Hovering around a 3.5, I decided to round up for this one. Why? Because at its core, Shepard's first novel is brilliant. Drawing influences from all manner of SciFi traditions and archetypes, Cassandra "Sandy" Kresnov is wonderfully three-dimensional. Unfortunately, the world she inhabits left me baffled far too often.

I felt this was very much a character-driven tale, with the main protagonist and many of the supporting cast well defined and well written. Due to the nature of this type of sub-ge...more

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Jul 31, 2010 Ryun rated it 4 of 5 stars

Joel Shepherd has written a cool book in CROSSOVER, both a kick-ass android political action tale and a deconstruction of humanity, with both aspects are equally rewarding.

On the one hand, we have the main character, Cassandra Kresnov: She is a badass android — skin and muscles stronger than steel, super
speed and reflexes…the works. Unfortunately, she is too smart for her own good (as an aside, here’s a reminder to future android/artificial intelligence scientists: There’s such a thing as “too s...more

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Jun 16, 2010 Tara Gelsomino rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. So I was reading through my google alerts for Katee Sackhoff one day when I came across an interview with the author of this book. He said he thought she might be the only actress capable of playing his main character Cassandra Kresnov, in this futuristic sci-fi action thriller trilogy. Naturally that intrigued me a bit and the rest of the interview hooked me enough to prompt to request this through interlibrary hold. Surprisingly (since it's from a small publisher) it was available in the syste...more So I was reading through my google alerts for Katee Sackhoff one day when I came across an interview with the author of this book. He said he thought she might be the only actress capable of playing his main character Cassandra Kresnov, in this futuristic sci-fi action thriller trilogy. Naturally that intrigued me a bit and the rest of the interview hooked me enough to prompt to request this through interlibrary hold. Surprisingly (since it's from a small publisher) it was available in the system and I got it and began reading right away and I liked both Sandy and the author's writing style immediately. The first chapter begins with her living a normal life, passing for human (though it's made clear to the reader that she isn't) in a foreign city in a world that's somewhat more advanced, but not unrecognizable to us. Soon all hell breaks lose though and she might be the target at the center of it all.

Sandy is a hell of a main character. She's intelligent, witty, and empathetic, and as you quickly learn, she is the total HBIC. She's literally the alpha cylon... uh GI; she was created to be the strongest and most capable enhanced super soldier, and yet she was also given more intelligence and emotion as a sort of experiment. (It would be a really lovely and complex role for Katee, both badass and vulnerable as she does so well...Joel Shepherd is currently writing a screenplay for it too.) In addition, this book, unlike most sci-fi novels passes the Bechdel Test like woah. The core relationship is between Sandy and female SWAT team leader Vanessa. They form an unlikely friendship that's very touching...and actually laced with a hint of femslash since Vanessa is bisexual, though Sandy is hetero.

Anyway, in addition to having fine character development, there's a lot of political intrigue and a lot of action as well (though personally I skimmed some of that stuff). I look forward to reading Breakaway and Killswitch, books two and three in the trilogy, though Crossover doesn't end with a cliffhanger but a satisfying conclusion of its own. (less)

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Feb 09, 2010 Jeff Koromi rated it 3 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This whole series has me pulled in different ways.

On the one hand, in the vein of Ghost in the Shell, Crossover presents a world where everyone is dailed into data 24/7. It's a hopeful future, one of commerce, techonology and peace won by the Federation in a costly war with the League.

The main character is an artificial human who, as a higher 'designation' than her peers, decides that the ideology of her side (the League; the logic and science-at-all-costs society) was not for her, and makes a d...more

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May 28, 2011 Steve rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi

She is tall, blonde, hot and an artificially created killing machine. Yes OK it is a bit juvenile, the whole idea is a bit of fan-boys’ wet dream, plenty of violence, flesh on show (well sort of) and exactly what you would expect from the pulp-sci-fi genre.

My only negative comments would be that the author sometimes tries to incorporate more cerebral ideas into the text – like the discussion about the rights and wrongs of governmental intrusion into privacy. I’m sure it is something Shepherd fe...more

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Feb 10, 2013 Eero rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi

Book has interesting cyberpunk like world where there is augmented humans and even fully artificial people called GIs, which is group that book's main character Cassandra Kresnov belongs.

Book's major premise is that there is two waring nations, federation and league. Which have different view towards GIs. League manufactures and uses GIs in their military, but see them as servants. Federations view towards GIs is opposite, which mean that nobody should make them and they are made killers, but wh...more Book has interesting cyberpunk like world where there is augmented humans and even fully artificial people called GIs, which is group that book's main character Cassandra Kresnov belongs.

Book's major premise is that there is two waring nations, federation and league. Which have different view towards GIs. League manufactures and uses GIs in their military, but see them as servants. Federations view towards GIs is opposite, which mean that nobody should make them and they are made killers, but when Cassandra comes in federation planet many insist that she should have same rights that normal humans have.
Federation is described to be society that is evolved from Earth's China and India, where League is described to be evolved from Earth's USA. In book one gets picture that Federation is good and League is bad, but Federation is also described to be alliance of several somewhat independent solar systems, which don't always see eye to eye in things, like what technologies and social politics should be developed. Which is why there is factions inside of the federation, who do cooperate with league. And this is where we come to books main story as it mostly deal with these factions and how they want to research Cassandra to get technology to make their own GIs.

Book's major flaw is that it don't know if it is political statement or action thriller, as it take as much rows to debate different political things like people right to privacy, dangers of technology, rights of artificial people, governmental system structure and evilness of politicians. But all this political debate is put in middle of action sequences. This bi-polarization make reading of book somewhat incoherent especially as sometimes book goes on and on in some things that don't feel interesting at the time.

Book's characters are also very messy as reasons behind their actions seems to change several times during the book, causing them feel very artificial, with main character this would not matter so much if book would not take so much pain to describe how she is just like human and how her psychic is one to one copy from regular human's psychic. And regular human character's also give same artificial feel about their personalities. This also cause that sex scenes and dialogs in book feel very awkward and cause me want to jump over them.

Where is book is good is action scenes, which is reason why I though that I would give it 2 stars instead of one as about half of the books is action scenes. But overall I could only say that this is not book that one should waste his/her time to read as there is much better sci-fi books in market.(less)

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Jul 04, 2010 Aaron rated it 5 of 5 stars

I've been a fan of cyberpunk for a while but too much of the genre has been subsumed into the techno-thriller genre. Dropping the philosophical aspects of the early genre in favor of action and little else, which is a shame.

This is definitely not one of those books. It's spent as much, or more, time considering the implications of the heroine's status as an artificial human as it did on the rest of the plot. And it did, if not subtly, then with a degree of skill that made it so compelling that t...more

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Dec 21, 2011 Shara (Calico Reaction) rated it 3 of 5 stars

So despite my stylistic issues, the book was a fun, easy read. Something I can definitely recommend to people (I’m always particular in blanketing recommending something, so I’ll say 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 in this series. Or trilogy? There’s at least three, I know that much. Whatever Shepherd's up to, this is a promising start to what could be a really fun series. And...more

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Oct 17, 2010 Joe Scholes rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2010

Crossover is my first “hard sci-fi” novel to read in several years. It took me a while to get into this book, but I enjoyed the story. The author has a habit of using sentence fragments, which I find annoying, although not as bad as authors who write in the first person present tense. I simply cannot read books written in present tense! It irritates me to no end. But I can tolerate the fragmented sentences.

An example, from the book:

“Loose, dark blonde hair lay mussed and untended to her forehead...more

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Jul 16, 2010 edifanob rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: my-books, 2010-reads

I must definitely read the rest of the trilogy.

A great SF read. Action and philosophy.

Sometimes I forget to update my reviews. Shame on me!

I wrote a guest review over at Walker of Worlds.

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Jun 24, 2009 Reed rated it 2 of 5 stars

I'm not sure why, but I'm having a hard time finding sf novels that suit my tastes lately. I'd heard good things about Shepherd "Cassandra Kresnov" series, so I thought I'd give it a try. I'd heard it was exciting, slam-bam sf fun--just what I wanted for some easy summer reading.

Unfortunately, that's not even close to what I found with Crossover. Shepherd's writing itself is not the problem. His descriptions are well done, his characterizations are good, his settings are well-wrought. But dang,...more

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Apr 09, 2010 Stefan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, www-fantasyliterature-com-review

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) Kre...more 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 which 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.

(This review was also published at the Fantasy Literature website: www.fantasyliterature.com - come check us out!)(less)

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Aug 02, 2009 Nathan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: reviewed-2009, sci-fi

An impressive action/intrigue science fiction novel. While I think that some of the foundations of the setting are a bit... off, if you accept the foundations, what follows is solid sci-fi.

It's got the right mix of action and intrigue to keep the pages turning, and honestly, the heroine appeals to the inner 14 year old boy in me. The action scenes are well done and the characters likable and realisitic.

Like all of the best science fiction it explores the human condition - what it means to be hu...more

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Jun 01, 2009 Yune rated it 3 of 5 stars

This begins with a very ordinary day in a futuristic, high-tech city. It drew me in because it was clear that the very mundane acts were novel to the protagonist, who turns out to be the most advanced artificial human ever created. She's trying to lead a civilian life (her origins, of course, are military). She fails, and is drawn into more political conflict, I think, than physical (althogh there's plenty of that).

I grew a bit disappointed by the way this shook out; I think the concept and the...more

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Aug 08, 2012 Zoe rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi, print-books

I bought all three books in the Cassandra Kresnov series a couple years back in Amsterdam, but kind of lost track of the books until this summer, when hubby read Crossover and the two sequels in the series back-to-back and declared them to be "really good." I think that for a great many of the "target market" males, nothing will seem off about the character Sandy Kresnov.

Except, she's a dude. In every aspect of her personality, the main character struck me as a male, and turning them and the oth...more I bought all three books in the Cassandra Kresnov series a couple years back in Amsterdam, but kind of lost track of the books until this summer, when hubby read Crossover and the two sequels in the series back-to-back and declared them to be "really good." I think that for a great many of the "target market" males, nothing will seem off about the character Sandy Kresnov.

Except, she's a dude. In every aspect of her personality, the main character struck me as a male, and turning them and the other main characters into women didn't change the fact that they all thought like dudes. I got what the writer was trying to say about artificial people not being sexually selective, but then later "character development" reveals that Sandy's hyper-sexuality is unique even among her people. And...her sexuality is male. Possibly gay male, but really, given how poorly the author writes a sex scene, I would argue that this story might have been improved without making the heroine a "nymphomaniac."

There are sex scenes in this book that I wanted to end. Me, Miss "I love porn" was instead begging, "Please, make the bad sex scene stop." But it gets worse. The author cannot write a decent chase scene without messing it up. The author spends many, many pages on political lectures, and the biggest "plot twists" in the book are political plays. This book is so, so boring. This writer could make a blow job during a gunfight boring. There's really no help for someone who thinks they're writing "cool" and they are in fact ice cold and killing their story with way, way too many tangential details.

Feeling something for the "heroine's" starting predicament of being violently dismembered, I stuck with this in the hope that maybe there would be some fast-paced payoff for all this slow buildup, but there is nothing this writer touches here that they don't blow badly. This is not to say there aren't some neat ideas in the premise. There are. But when you start a book by ripping the heroine into little pieces, and then insist that she'll get over that a few days later, you've confused a man from an 80s action movie for a woman. In fact, if the main character were a dude in an 80s sci-fi movie, I'd be more likely to believe this ridiculous and contrived plot.

I'm sorry to get harpy, but this is my main point of complaint. Sandy is an artificial person with a human personality imprinted on an artificial brain. The story claims that she has a human sexuality because her brain is a copy of an organic human brain. BUT, Sandy's internal line of reasoning, her method of coping with stress, her hypersexuality and indiscreet need for physical contact; it's all male. Adding breasts, blonde hair, and blue eyes doesn't change this conflict of her character. I don't see a butch woman. I see a character made female simple to satisfy the writer's need for some lame sexual fantasy. After all, Sandy is the ultimate badass, AND she's indiscriminate with who she sleeps with. Dudes in the target audience are sure to love this combination. But to me, Sandy comes across as hugely fake, and I'd be willing to give back a star in my rating if Sandy had been Andrew instead. Because then the character would have been more realistic.

The same is true of the head of SWAT, Vannessa Rice, a character who's "short" "cute," and "considered fluffy" among her troops. This is all strictly male fantasies, and the women don't really behave like women except at very rare moments near the end of the book. The rest of the time, they act like men. So for me, the story just wasn't very believable.

There really wasn't much I liked about this story, and I find Sandy's reaction to trauma to be the first of many bad character development choices. It's strictly a by-the-numbers formula, and it never rises above a man's fantasy of how awesome women would be, if they only acted more like men.

I give Crossover two stars, and I'm sorely tempted to drop that to one. I can't say that I'd really recommend it to anyone, but as hubby liked it, I'll guess fans of military sci-will think it's "super." Mostly, I was bored to tears, and it's going to be a long time before I bother reading the other books in this series.(less)

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Dec 15, 2011 Roberta rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

I was really interested in reading about a artificial woman. It is an idea with great potential and I wanted to see how the author tried to developed it.

But the feeling I got from this novel is that the author tried to do too much. There are great issues treated: what is humanity? Can an artificial person that has sentiments and intelligent be human?, and the contrast between progress totally abandon of the past, and people immersed in their origins and culture. And again, politics and human rig...more

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Feb 24, 2013 Hillary rated it 1 of 5 stars

I was really excited about this book when I read the back cover, but it turns out that this was really just the author's way to get his fantasies about hyper-sexual androids and bisexual women published. There were a lot of good thoughts about theoretical rights of sentient machines, but it was lost among the overabundance of sexual language.

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Jan 14, 2009 Barbara rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: sf-f-goodies

Very interesting android/human story. Just what does it mean to be "human"? Is it all biology? or is there more to it than that? Great action story, though it gets a bit wordy at times. First in a series(of at least three). Our android heroine, Cassandra, is a well developed character, but several of the minor characters are equally well-rounded. I am looking forward to the next book.

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Sep 01, 2010 Danielle rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: scifi-fantasy, recommend-to-joci, successfully-transportive

This book manages to critique, oh-so-subtly, modern politics, social and ethnic issues in this novel based far in the future. A fun flavor of Blade Runner mixed with Ghost in the Shell. You wouldn't really expect an intelligent comment on modern society to be woven in, but it's there. Will definitely continue the series.

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Jul 14, 2010 Flint rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction

Sandy is an interesting character, unfortunately Shepherd doesn't effectively utilize her as a main character in his story and it's no wonder. His political drama subplot is so ponderous and unwielding, Sandy literally gets swallowed up by it. If he had simply kept the story fairly simple and more intimate this novel would have worked much better. As it stands, you end up reading more about the politics of Callay, the Federation and the League and their stance on biotech technology than you do a...more

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Nov 20, 2009 mister rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi

Really fun, violent, sci-fi. Cassandra Kresznev is my favorite kind of protagonist, conflicted, indestructible, designed to kill.
Lots of great charectors, and a wonderful mega-city to boot. This series isn't high literature, but it sure is fun.

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Mar 11, 2010 Kate rated it 3 of 5 stars

Despite sometimes clunky writing, and a rather slow introductory world building section in the beginning, I quite enjoyed this book. It's a story that manages to both be exciting and ask deep questions about what it means to be human.

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Nov 17, 2012 Tom Jenkins rated it 4 of 5 stars

Author has a tendency to over describe things making it a very slow read in the early chapters. Once the book gets deeper into the story though it is much faster paced and a good read.

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Sep 12, 2011 xdroot rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi

A story that enquires into what makes someone human. Throw in some politics, assassination, android love, and plenty of fight scenes and it turns into a fun read.

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Jan 15, 2012 Hildo rated it 2 of 5 stars

Decent first novel. Having a nymphomaniac self-healing cyborg as the lead character smacks a little too much of geek wish-fulfillment.

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May 14, 2012 Celtgal rated it 5 of 5 stars

Just read this one and it was good. I'm looking forward to the next one for sure.

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Aug 06, 2009 Jo (Mixed Book Bag) rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is a very good series. I was pulling for Cassandra Kresnov from the first.

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Jan 13, 2013 Kimberly rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction

This book had high hopes in my mind. I liked the idea. And at first the action was decent but then it got boring and political. A little action here, good action when it happened, but then gone again. It couldn't hold me. I'm not an English major and usually grammar stuff doesn't bother me all that much but the sentence frags in this book just jumped out at me. I picked up another book before this one was finished. Never a good sign. Then it was time to return it to the library and back it went....more

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Sep 07, 2012 Tracy Shing rated it 2 of 5 stars

To be honest, I didn't even finish it. Love this kind of stuff, just didn't love this book.

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About Joel Shepherd

Joel Shepherd is an Australian science fiction author. He moved to Perth, Western Australia with his family when he was seven, where he later studied film and television arts at Curtin University. He now lives in Adelaide.

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Crossover (Cassandra Kresnov #1)

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