Callay belongs to the Federation, an alliance opposed to biotechnology, including—especially—artificial persons. For this and other reasons, the Federation is no friend of the League. And when Sandy saves the president of Callay from an assassination attempt, she reveals her unhuman fighting abilities and outs herself as an android.

Now Cassandra Kresnov is living with the consequences of her act. She works for the Callayan security forces, most visibly as a member of Tanusha's SWAT Four team, which is led by Lt. Vanessa Rice, her best friend. Friendship with humans is new to the android, as are many other experiences, including the distrust, fear, even hatred that most Federation humans feel for androids. They believe Sandy isn't human. Sandy isn't sure herself.

Sandy's rescue of President Katia Neiland has plunged her deep into the confusing, dangerously divided world of human politics. The president of Callay consults her, while a Callayan security force pursues her violently through Tanusha, even as she pursues the terrorist who just bombed a pleasure boat. Protests metamorphose into riots, while anti-biotech cults blow up portions of Tanusha and target members of Parliament with suicide bombers. And bureaucratic red tape proves no less hazardous than the criminals and anarchists of the Tanushan Underground.

The biggest threat to Sandy may be the Callayan leaders, who are pondering a vote to leave the Federation. This prospect attracts considerable interest, overt and covert, from the League, which wants Sandy back. And what reason does Sandy have to stay in the Federation, for which she's done so much, yet whose people continue to fear her for being made, not born? Even more compellingly, Sandy has discovered that she is not alone. The League is home to another intelligent and self-aware android, the smooth operator known as Major Mustafa Ramoja.

Eyeball kicks that miss their targets

Australian writer Joel Shepherd introduced a complex, multicultural future in his debut novel, Crossover. Set a few centuries hence, the first Cassandra Kresnov book explored a fascinating interstellar civilization dominated by Asian colonists, most prominently the Indians and Chinese (the United States, undone by its own aggressiveness, is a nonentity better known as Los Estados Unidos). In the sequel, Breakaway, Shepherd continues to develop his ambitious future with considerable sociocultural and political astuteness. More than occasionally, readers will find themselves reminded uncomfortably of current events, as when Shepherd's protagonist states, "I like that the public can change their mind. It means politicians have to be flexible, and take all public mood-swings into account. Nothing's more dangerous than a narrow-focused leadership with a closed mind."

Shepherd's universe is developed in enormous depth, and Breakaway delivers all the world-building details that SF fans expect—and many, many more. Which is a problem. Too often, Shepherd's dialogue and exposition swamp readers in information that is unnecessary to the plot. Readers are further hindered by the loose writing, as in this multiply redundant description of a city-underlit stormcloud: "Above, the scudding grey cloud glowed palely luminescent, trapping the mass of light below. Everything glistened and shone...."

Breakaway's information overload probably results from Shepherd striving for the cyberpunk density of eyeball-kicking detail exemplified by Neuromancer's opening line: "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." But to kick the eyeball, details need to be far more precisely targeted than Shepherd's generic mentions of "everything," "mass of light," groundcars, gardens and so on. Many readers will find themselves skimming or skipping sections of text as they seek the action scenes.

Shepherd's protagonist, the smart yet naive Cassandra Kresnov, is a sympathetic character, and an intriguing new addition to SF's self-aware android tradition, which includes Clifford Simak's Time and Again, Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Blade Runner, Robert A. Heinlein's Friday and the anime series Ghost in the Shell. But, unlike the above works, Breakaway doesn't really explore the "are androids human?" theme. This is due to Sandy's too-close resemblance to a biological human. Only two elements make her seem nonhuman. The first is her ass-kicking. She's more Superman than human in her abilities (which can have unfortunate consequences for the dramatic tension; when Cassandra points out that her presence means some kidnappers are "already dead," readers already know).

The other element is the heterosexual Sandy's friendship with the bisexual Vanessa, which involves such interactions as Sandy giving Vanessa a massage while bringing up the subject of cunnilingus. Sandy is hardly conducting this friendship like a heterosexual human female, but it doesn't come across as android-naive or android-bizarre, because Sandy sounds just like the stereotype of the heterosexual man who's fascinated with lesbianism. Why Vanessa (who is—speaking of stereotypes—in love with her hetero best friend) doesn't give Sandy a soul kiss or a slap across the face is a mystery that remains unresolved in Breakaway.