Book Thoughts

Androids.  Sex.  Futuristic urban setting.  Explosions.  Gun battles.  All of these things should add up to create an adrenaline fueled adventure.  However, Crossover, the debut novel from Australian author Joel Shepherd falls short.

The first scenes start off with a bang.  Quite literally actually.  We are introduced to GI (aka android) Cassandra Kresnov as she gets ready to go to some job interviews at software companies on the planet Callay.  Following her interviews, she goes out for a night on the town and this is where we are introduced to her love for sex.  So as you see, the novel starts with a bang.  (Yes, I know that was lame.  Sue me.)

Sandy is an android from the “enemy” galactic government - the technologically advanced League.  After deciding that life in the League isn’t for her, she defects and tries to settle down on member-planet of the Federation (the more conservative government that highly disapproves of androids.)  We are treated to the standard soul-searching questions androids ask themselves.  Can they live normal lives?  What is their purpose?  Will they ever feel emotions exactly as the way humans do?  Shouldn’t she deserve the same rights as other citizens?

These things all run through Sandy’s mind numerous times during the novel.  It was all a little predictable but still believable.  I didn’t have a problem with the soul searching android with a nymphomania complex.  Hell, that sounds like some good reading right there.

No, the biggest miss with this book is the plot in general.  It’s a convoluted mess of different government bureaucracies competing with each other.  There’s a coup sponsored by the Feds, trying to be stopped by the Callay Security Agency, with support from an ex-League android, along with interference run by a League android-commando team.  Even that was just confusing.

I couldn’t follow the action scenes at all.  With some novels, I read an action scene and can picture the locations of the characters, the setting, and the action.  However, in Crossover, I was guessing the entire time.  The sentence structure and descriptions were just bad.  I can’t think of any other way to put it.

Side note:  This may be an Australian thing but I saw the strangest conjugation of the verb “suicide” ever.  The sentence read something something…”she would have suicided.”  I don’t know if that form is the Australian way, but it just sounded odd to me.  I would have said blah blah…”she would have committed suicide.”  I had never seen it written that way before.  But, if it is just the Australian way of saying it, then shame on me for being ignorant.

With the convoluted plot that doesn’t seem to mesh together and the lackluster action scenes, Crossover falls short of the expectations I had of it.  It nails the sex part.  Though, almost a little too much.  One of the other characters, Lt. Vanessa Rice is self-professed bisexual and it seems that after every exchange with Sandy she is always making some comment like, “It’s too bad you’re programmed to be into boys…”  Enough already!  We get it!  We know sex sells, and we know lots of guys would love to hear about some hot android girl on girl action, but it’s too much!  One such jibe would have been plenty.  Repeating it at least three more times just comes across as desperate ploy for more readers.

I have the second novel, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to read it yet.  If I do, I sure hope that Shepherd has improved his writing.  If the sequel, Breakaway, is as sloppy as this book, then I shudder to imagine what the third one is like.

Score: 2.5 / 5

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