Joel Shepherd

“Killswitch” carries straight on from “Breakaway”. Cassandra has completed her transformation in the eyes of the Kalian public from feared killer fembot android to kick-ass hero, defending the planet and helping to lead the planetary defence force. We’ve almost reached the point where people might think that GI super-soldiers are a good thing. Then Joel Shepherd mixes things up in intriguing ways.

Firstly, it turns out that Cassandra is not so invulnerable after all, there is a show more killswitch in her head that can end her at any time. Secondly there is a rogue GI on the loose, based on her own design but with none of Cassandra’s scruples about not killing people. Thirdly we see more of the on-planet League GIs, both a former member of Cassandra’s League Dark Star team who is going through her own evolution and the enigmatic Head of Security at the League Embassy.

This mix produces great action scenes but it also provides a vehicle for looking at just what it means to be a GI: the power that they have, the loyalties that shape them and the choices that they face.

Add in terrorists, political intrigue and a blockade by the Earth Space Fleet and you have another fast-moving sci-fi military thriller.

Joel Shepherd writes the action scenes with flair (although I thought one of the chases with Cassandra eluding security went on too long) and makes you care about the people, even when the people are artificial. There is humour as well as action, politics as well as relationships and an ever-deepening understanding of the universe this is all happening in.

But what keeps me coming back to the Cassandra Kresnov books is the hopeful tone that they strike. Although the books are full of threats, violence and gun-battles, at their heart there is a sense of tranquility that comes from Cassandra herself. She understands that the threats are real and that the violence is necessary but what drives her is a desire to protect her freedom to spend time with the people she loves and to catch the next wave on her surfboard. From Cassandra, these are far from shallow aspirations. She has the ability and the intellect to be an almost unstoppable killing machine who could subdue whole planets to her will. That she chooses to eat out with her friends and work off her energy of a surfboard, demonstrates her understanding that, while war is sometimes necessary, it is peace that is the glory of any civilization. I enjoy immersing myself in this refreshing and perhaps distinctively Australian, view of the world. show less

23 Years On FireThe Cassandra Kresnov in "23 Years On Fire" is more grown up and much more dangerous than the kick-ass killbot who'd rather surf than fight that I met in the first three books of the series.

This Cassandra Kresnov has had time between political/military crises to think about who she is and what she wants. She's also been joined by other high-designation GIs (artificial people, built as sentient weapons) who have left the League to for freedom in the Federation and she's show more starting to understand what GIs who are not doomed to die young in battle might be capable of.

Cassandra (Sandy to her friends) has been in battle for most of her life, prompting the journalist writing her biography to propose "23 Years On Fire" as the working title.

She had already decided that the League, which treated GIs as disposable weapons, was not worthy of her loyalty. In this book, although she remains loyal to the Federation that has given her a home, she realises that her interests and theirs might diverge. She's going to have to choose sides. Again.

As with the previous books, "23 Years On Fire" is packed with action (it opens with Sandy and her small troop of GIs leading a covert assault on a planet, that is doing very bad things to its citizens), interspersed by periods of reflection and character building.

Except that, this time, the technology has become more powerful and Sandy's reflections include the possibility that she may have to do things that the Federation doesn't want her to do. In the previous books, Sandy was the exception. She was the GI trying to become more human or at least be accepted by humans. In this book, Sandy is a gifted GI amongst other GIs with a life beyond war and her closest human friend has been augmented to the point where she can match the performance of some GIs. The idea of a world that includes people who are more than human or other than human is becoming a reality.

Now the war is over, the League is imploding and some worlds are going rogue. When Sandy learns that one of these worlds, ruled by crime lords in business suits, is experimenting with new GIs who have no free will, she feels obliged to do something.

In the process, she finds out who her real friends are, discovers the real origins of GI technology, and finds herself leading "her people" against an evil, repressive regime that has created a nightmare world.

Sandy starts to look into why some humans behave in ways that don't fit the facts of their situation. She describes "Compulsive Narrative Syndrome" to account for how the stories that we tell ourselves have more impact on our beliefs than the facts we have available. This seemed such a plausible idea that I did a separate post on it: "Compulsive Narrative Syndrome – if it doesn’t exist, it should."

All in all this is a much darker, more sophisticated book than its predecessors without losing any of the wit, humanity and "let's blow lots of stuff up" action that made the other books enjoyable.

The change surprised me until I checked the publication dates. The first three books "Crossover", "Breakaway" and "Killswitch" were published between 2001 and 2004. Then Joel Shepherd put Cassandra Kresnov to one side and published the four book "A Trial Of Blood And Steel" fantasy series. He has only recently revisited Cassandra Kresnov. "23 Years On Fire" was published in 2013, followed by "Operation Shield" in 2014 and "Originator" in 2015.

The break has freshened up the series without breaking from its roots. I'm looking forward to seeing where the next two books will take me. show less

“Operation Shield” continues straight on from where “23 Years On Fire” finished, which is probably the only problem I have with what was otherwise a very enjoyable read: the first hundred or so pages of “Operation Shield” felt more like the (slightly anti-climatic conclusion to “23 Years On Fire” than the start of a new novel.

The GI rebellion on the former League world, Pantala, has stalled. Surrounded by superior ground forces held at bay only by the threat of bomabardment show more from orbit, the GIs start to question Sandy’s leadership and she begins to understand how few options they have.

Meanwhile, the brothers and sister that Sandy has been trying to protect, Danya, Svetlana and Kiril, are doing their best to survive and reconnect with her.

This is well written, exciting, stuff that shows Sandy as something more than an indestructible killer android. The difficulty that I had was that Sandy’s withdrawal from this situation was so abrupt that I checked whether I’d missed a few pages.

The main themes of “Operation Shield” really kick in when Sandy returns to Cally with the three kids and finds that the Callian way of life and the life she has built for herself are under threat from off-world Federal forces. We get the opportunity to see Sandy coping with being responsible for children, albeit resourceful and sometimes dangerous children while still being at the centre of political intrigue and military action.

I’m filled with admiration for Joel Shepherd’s ability to make power politics and military action real and compelling without accepting either of them as a goal or a solution. He brings to life the posturing, manipulation and betrayal that accompany political ambition and the destruction and loss of life and possible futures that military action inflicts. Sandy is talented and ruthless enough to deal with politics and war but what motivates her is the desire for a peaceful life where she and those she loves can surf together and have a barbecue at the beach afterwards. It’s an extremely human desire for an android to have.

Over the course of the first five books in the series, Sandy has grown into someone very interesting. I’m looking forward to seeing what she will become in the final book of the series, “Originator”. show less

"The Drysine Legacy" carries straight of from "Renegade" but manages to crank up the complexity and broaden the scope of the story to include even more aliens and to get deeper into the AI threat.

Like its predecessor, it's a long book but the pages fly by and the story never drags. I always wanted to know what would happen next.

I felt that this book was less character driven than the last one. The intricacies of the plot dominate the book and drive most of the action. Yet the characters DO show more continue to develop and their relationships shift in realistic ways.

The action scenes (and there are many of them) are outstanding: easy to visualise, massive in scale and very fast moving.

I particularly enjoyed getting to see various aliens in the story develop so that I understood more about their point of view and their motivation. In some ways, I found it easier to empathise with the aliens than I did to get inside the heads of the Marines.

The AI in the story is well imagined and avoids the clichés and simplifications that picture AIs as just big computers who are scarily smarter than us. This AI has a strong personality that is hard ignore and impossible to second guess. In some ways that's much scarier than Skynet. I found myself liking "her" and then realised that I had no way of knowing if I was just being conned. Which is exactly the dillema for the human crew.

This is well written space opera on a massibe scale that continues to deliver excitement and action as well as big ideas and intriguing characters. show less