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 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. ( )

This book is a great extension to the first 3 Kresnov books and Sandy has matured a lot in the 5 years since book 3. Not only is this a good story about the integration of human and biotech cultures, the author opens up quite a few alternate evolutionary avenues for future books. I'm hoping Hollywood is paying attention. ( )

23 Years On Fire was a bit of a pleasant surprise. Not really knowing what to expect when the book arrived from the publisher for review, I didn't exactly plan on reading this right away, seeing as it is described as the fourth Cassandra Kresnov novel and I generally prefer not to start reading in the middle of a series if I can help it.

However, my curiosity became too hard to ignore. Plus, the sleek, elegant cover image was part of the attraction, appearing to show an armored female black ops-type soldier in the midst of performing a military free fall jump. I flipped it open to read the first line, with the intention of just checking out the first few pages...only to get pulled in by the explosive opening scene of a covert assault on an enemy base. I ended up finishing the whole book in a matter of days.

As it turned out, not having read the first three books that came before did not hinder me too much, and I was able to follow this one just fine. It can definitely be read by itself, and the main character Cassandra "Sandy" Kresnov's backstory is easy enough to unravel just based on what unfolds in this book alone. An artificial person or an android called a "GI", Sandy was created by the League but defected to the Federation to join their security forces on the world of Callay.

That decision had a lot to do with the one thing Sandy would not stand for, which is the mistreatment of her fellow GIs. Just because they are synthetic doesn't mean that they do not possess humanity, and when it is brought to light that New Torah is involved in ruthless experimentation with artificial soldiers, Sandy leads a mission there to investigate. What she finds on New Torah, however, is a lot more than she bargained for.

Before this, I never would have thought military sci-fi would be my kind of thing (actually, I hadn't even read enough of it to determine whether it's my "thing" or not) but this turned out to be highly entertaining. It rather reads like a summer Hollywood sci-fi flick, and as such I thought the sex was a little overplayed and the book is heavily indulgent on the action, gun fighting and explosions, but it is a high-tech in-your-face roller coaster ride as it should be.

Sandy herself is somewhat of an enigma, even though I think she's a great character. She's certainly a different and unique kind of protagonist, being a synthetic human. Because she is a more advanced designation, this also gives her higher intellect, thus leading to her ability to have a wider range of emotions, to question her circumstances and form her own moral code.

As a result, she has a developed personality but also a childlike attitude towards certain topics, sometimes caring too much about something and at other times caring too little, and often her approach is very direct. I think Joel Shepherd did an incredible job giving Sandy an identity that stands out and at the same time making it clear that she is hardwired to be a certain way. I still don't know what to make of her yet, but then again I didn't have the benefit of getting to know her from the beginning of the series.

Ultimately, I went into this book knowing very little about it, but came out glad for the experience. Furthermore, I enjoyed this even though it has a bit of a cyberpunk feel to it, which was surprising but also a credit to the author, given how that has been a subgenre I've had little luck with in the past. A lot of the ideas I encountered were very interesting, and the book proved tough to put down. ( )