In last year’s CROSSOVER, Joel Shepherd introduced synthetic humanoid killing machine Cassandra Kresnov, who not only was able to kill dozens of people in a relatively short timeframe, but also contemplate her existence and the meaning therein.

Now Pyr brings us BREAKAWAY, the second in a trilogy of books that have been available for years Down Under, but woefully ignored by lesser publishers.

BREAKAWAY picks up just a few months after CROSSOVER left off, and Sandy is now comfortably ensconced in a S.W.A.T. team in the glittering future metropolis of Tanusha, on the planet Callay. The events of the previous book have put the planet on edge, however, placing Sandy in the center of a political firestorm. She’s constantly under surveillance by the government she’s sworn to protect, and dissidents both inside and outside the government have designs on the planet’s future.

There is an awful lot to love about these books, but one thing I really want is a simple flowchart of all the various political organizations and affiliations in Shepherd’s universe. The two main players are the League and the Federation, and among those are individual planetary governments, secretive intelligence agencies, rogue splinter cells among these groups and various other parties – many described by means of interesting acronyms. It had been a year since I’d read CROSSOVER, and BREAKAWAY’s complex political structure really threw me for a loop for the first couple of chapters.

But seriously, don’t let that bother you. The key to reading science fiction that seems to be over your head is to persevere and have faith in the narrative, and this tactic works in Shepherd’s favor. As he brings readers slowly into the complexity of his universe, he also introduces new characters who represent new factions or new faces of old factions.

Among these newcomers are Ari, an underground hacker-type who might be too awesome for his own good and I imagine looks a bit like Shepherd’s bio picture, and another whose identity would totally spoil an awesome part of the book and whom you should discover for yourself.

Ever-mindful that books with leaping cyber-chicks on the cover are expected to have leaping cyber-chicks within, Shepherd kicks the action up a notch from CROSSOVER, providing more than enough lethal grooviness to satisfy action junkies. This series is not just popcorn, though; amid the shooting and kicking is a really interesting story about trust and friendship and the aftermath of betrayal.

Sandy has complex emotions for a man-made killing machine, and strangely enough, she thinks about things and comes to conclusions that aren’t always obvious. She hates the government that created her to do its dirty work, but her adopted home doesn’t exactly welcome her with a laurel and hardy handshake, either. Add totally realistic idiot politicians, and a story unfolds that is delicately brutal and a step up from its already good predecessor.

The non-action bits just might be good enough that Shepherd could have left out the hot synthetic hunter-killer operatives altogether and set the series on a rural Nova Scotia sheep farm, but would I have read it? Probably not. So buy BREAKAWAY for the hot action, but read it for the characters. –Ryun Patterson

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• CROSSOVER by Joel Shepherd