Focus on Joel Shepherd

Today I want to discuss author Joel Shepherd.

Since his own website offers no biographical information, I pulled the following from Wikipedia:

Joel Shepherd (born 1974 in Adelaide, South Australia) 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.

He is the son of Kate Shepherd, owner/operator of Austral Ed, a small Australian educational book supplier to Asia. He helps his mother in this business and has travelled widely as a result.

His first unpublished manuscript was shortlisted for the George Turner Prize in 1998 and the manuscript for Crossover was shortlisted in 1999.

His first novel Crossover was shortlisted for the science fiction division of the 2001 Aurealis Awards, that recognize the achievements of Australian science fiction, fantasy and horror writers.

His first three novels follow the adventures of Cassandra Kresnov, (who describes herself as an artificial human being), who has deserted from her Special Operations unit in the League and fled to the city of Tanusha on the Federation planet of Callay, posing as a journeyman cognitive software expert.

Before we dissect Joel’s work, I should mention that his first three novels are titled Crossover, Breakaway, and Killswitch. His website displays cover art for a fourth novel titled Sasha: a Trial of Blood & Steel. From the artwork, I assume it’s fantasy, not science fiction.

Feel free to visit his site at www.joelshepherd.com. I was somewhat disappointed in his site. Considering he’s a sci-fi author, I expected something flashier, robust, and up-to-date. The front page showcases his work, which is the most important task, but most of the links go nowhere, or lead to woefully out of date material. The entire site looks like it was slapped together in Front Page in about an hour.

Ultimately, none of this matters. When it’s all said and done, the only important question is this: Can Joel write a good story?

The short answer is “Yes, he can.”

I’m basing my opinions on his first two books, Crossover and Breakaway. I haven’t read Killswitch yet

In a nutshell, Joel’s first three novels are about a super soldier, a cyborg-type artificial human named Cassandra Kresnov. While most of her kind has diminished capacity for independent thought, emotions, or creative problem solving, Kresnov is a special case who is capable of totally independent thought and a full range of human emotions. Mentally, emotionally and spiritually, she’s completely human. Physically, she’s a killing machine capable of dishing out (and taking) insane levels of carnage far above and beyond anything a normal human could ever manage.

Shepherd isn’t the first to explore the concept. When I read the first pages of Crossover, I was immediately reminded of Aphrodite IX and Alfonso Azpiri’s work. It’s not too far removed from the “Terminator” concept, especially the female terminator played by Kristanna Loken in the third movie. Even though it’s not a new concept, Shepherd handles it very well, bringing more depth and life to the character than I’ve seen in other similar storylines.

In fact, the characters are really what make this tale worth reading. Shepherd takes time and care to develop Kresnov and many supporting characters to the point where I forgot I was reading about sci-fi people on a different planet hundreds of years in the future. They seemed like people I could meet right now. Shepherd does just as well developing the relationships between the characters, and he does it in terms that are easily relatable. As a reader, I often understood the relationships between characters from their interactions long before the nature of the relationship was stated in the narrative.

Shepherd also does a good job with his setting. He effectively creates a futuristic city on a different planet, complete with politics, intrigue, and culture. I’m very impressed with the way he sprinkles history throughout the story. He inserts little tidbits of backstory here and there throughout the narrative in places where it makes sense for the characters to be thinking about or discussing that specific piece of history. It's very well done.

It was a refreshing change to see Indian culture and religion as dominant influences on the planet, and I enjoyed the way Shepherd describes why Indian culture is prevalent. Of course, it ensured I had no idea how to pronounce the names of over half of the characters, which is a huge pet peeve of mine, but I managed.

For the most part, the plot progresses in a quick-paced, logical sequence with a few twists and turns here and there. Sometimes the action gets bogged down a little bit while the narrative shifts gears and explores various aspects of the political intrigue that underlies much of the plot, and there were a few places, especially in Breakaway, where the chain of connected events got long enough that I had to stop and think “Now why are they here, doing this?” Fortunately, I was always able to trace the sequence of events back and remember why the characters were bothering to do what ever they were doing.

In summary, I like the basic premise of the main character. I like the characters and their relationships. I like the setting. I like the plot. I even like the deeper questions that the story poses about the nature of life and humanity.

So what’s not to like?

For one, Shepherd’s writing style grates my nerves. Sometimes I wondered if it would kill him to write two complete sentences in a row. The man writes in fragments. Not all the time, but often. Sometimes just one word. Really. Not making this up. Wish I were. But I’m not. Gets annoying really fast. Doesn’t it?

While I recognize the value of the tactfully placed fragment, Shepherd uses them excessively, to the point of distraction.

He also has a habit of blasting the reader with barrages of tech-jargon imagery – often conveyed in broken sentence fragments – that make virtually no sense. It happens most often when a character links mentally into a computer network, and I understand what he’s trying to do. He’s trying to convey the rush of technical data, the flood of digital signals mixing with the meat brain, all while trying to maintain a flow-of-consciousness effect. The problem is that sometimes it works, but sometimes it doesn't, and he tries to do it virtually every time some one jacks into a computer network, which happens on every other page. The result is frequent passages of fragmented nonsensical tech jargon that the reader quickly learns to recognize and scan over until they encounter something more relevant to the plot point at hand.

I have mixed feelings about the way he writes his dialogue. He does well most of the time, but occasionally he uses nonstandard dialogue tags in nonstandard ways that break up the flow of the conversation and allow me to see the author. In my opinion, the author should be invisible while I’m reading, especially during dialogue sequences. When I’m reading dialogue, if the author has done his job well, I’ll forget that I’m reading the words. I’ll hear the conversation in my head, not remembering or caring that I’m actually reading words that were written by somebody else. Shepherd’s use of dialogue tags makes him very visible to the reader, and it diminishes the reading experience.

Last of all, I wonder if the prominent female characters could have been written to be more feminine. I can’t really fault him on this, since I have similar difficulties, but I think it’s obvious that the books were written by a man writing about women. I base this observation not so much on the details and scenes that are there, but on what isn’t there. I realize the main character isn’t the typical woman. Depending on how you define the word, she might not be considered human. Still, she (and a number of other characters) is female, and I never read any distinct passage that really drove it home for me. With a few minor modifications and pronoun changes, almost every female character in the books could be changed to males, and it would still read OK.

Simply stated: I enjoy and appreciate what he has created. I’m not impressed with every aspect of how he did it.

I don’t think I’d recommend these books to someone I was trying to convert to sci-fi, but if you’re already a fan of the genre, the Kresnov novels are a good read and a fun trip, despite the smacks I handed out for his writing style. I will buy and read the third book sometime this year, because I want to know what happens to Kresnov. Shepherd has made me care about the character and has made me curious to know her fate, so he’s done his job well enough. I hope his new series is as entertaining.