Product Description

Charon was the most ruthless—and brilliant—criminal of the twenty-first century, a practitioner of illegal robotics and android research. He is dead now, and General Thomas Wharington believes his team of experts has deleted all the electronic copies the megalomaniacal inventor created of himself. However, one major problem remains: Alpha,

the only android survivor of Charon's cybernetic empire. Outwardly indistinguishable from a human woman, Alpha has superhuman strength and speed, and perhaps even more deadly capabilities still unknown. Thomas's superiors want her dismantled and studied, but to Thomas it feels like murder. He stalls for time, a move that could prove disastrous. Alpha escapes from an escape-proof compound, kidnaps Thomas, and takes him to one of Charon's hidden installations. Charon might be dead, but Alpha continues to carry out her late master's orders, and she refuses to elaborate on what those orders entail. Her behavior is becoming more human—or so it seems. Is she developing emotions and a conscience, or is she just learning to counterfeit them as a means of carrying out her enigmatic orders? And do those orders include Thomas's death sentence?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #211945 in Books
• Published on: 2007-11-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 368 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781416555124
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
The evil genius Charon is dead, but Alpha, the gorgeous, superintelligent android he built, remains an unpredictable threat in Asaro's entertaining mix of hard SF and romance, the sequel to Sunrise Alley (2004). As director of the Office of Computer Operations of the National Information Agency, Lt. Gen. Thomas Wharington is determined to learn Alpha's secrets, but he has about as much success against her expert ability to "read" human body language as he does in finding a baby-sitter for his precocious granddaughter, Jamie. As Wharington wonders about the burgeoning sexual bond between him and the android, Alpha takes him captive and transports him to Charon's island hideaway, where he learns a terrible secret: Charon has survived and, with Alpha's help, plots to take over the world. Asaro has all the right pieces for a taut thriller, though the action suffers at times from a surfeit of plot threads, including the still-unresolved subject of Sunrise Alley itself, a shadowy group of free-roving "Evolving Intelligences" with vast power over the Internet "mesh." (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Asaro's extrapolation of current artificial intelligence theories, begun in Sunrise Alley (2004), continues with different characters, including another female protagonist. Six-foot EI (evolving intelligence) Alpha flies jets and wields a machine gun in the good cause of kidnapping General Thomas Wharington. In keeping with Asaro's romantic agenda, a shared ordeal on a desert island makes the two aware of their commonalities. The general's child-prodigy granddaughter and a female pro-android activist in love with her lover's android reincarnation are two further strong characters. Roland Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author
Catherine Asaro has an M.A. in physics, and a Ph.D. in chemical physics, both from Harvard. She has done research at the University of Toronto, The Max Planck Institute, and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. A former ballet and jazz dancer, she founded the Mainly Jazz Dance program at Harvard and now teaches at the Caryl Maxwell Classical Ballet. She has written fourteen novels in the popular Skolian Saga, the latest being Schism (Tor, 2004) as well as two near-future technothrillers, The Veiled Web and The Phoenix Code. She currently runs Molecudyne Research and lives in Maryland with her husband and daughter.

Customer Reviews

Good mix of science fiction and romance
Alpha is a well written romance between a dangerous 'female' android and the man trying to pry secrets from her. It is set in a future close enough to now to be recognizable, but distant enough that some artificial intelligences have developed to the point where they are at or above human intelligence level, while still remaining non-human. This is a recent enough development that governments and societies are still groping for ways to cope with it.

The story is well-plotted, with characters I cared about, plenty of action, a believable relationship at its core, and quite a few loose ends that probably imply that there will be more books in this universe.

Alpha is a sequel, and the author certain leaves room for additional stories, but it stands well on its own.

I really wanted to like this one, but it's not nearly as good as "Sunrise Alley"
Plot Summary: This follow up to the sci-fi romantic thriller "Sunrise Alley" focuses on sexy enemy android Alpha and Lt. General Thomas Wharington, director of a government spook squad. Alpha is convinced that her boss, Charon, is still alive, and to that end, she's still trying to capture Thomas per her last order. Thomas finds himself protecting Alpha from his higher-ups who want to strip her down like an old car for the information they can scavenge from her neural mesh. When Alpha kidnaps Thomas he must break her programming, but how can he reason with an android who has no concept of free will?

Sunrise Alley is a terrific man-hunt thriller loaded with tons of sci-fi, so I was eager to read the follow up novel, Alpha. Although Alpha is okay, it's not in the same class as its predecessor, so I'm left feeling a bit bummed right now. The story didn't flow with edge-of-my-seat action. Instead, it felt kind of bumpy and uneven, especially regarding the romantic relationship between Alpha and Thomas. It didn't help that physically they kept alternating between being together and being apart, so they started over from scratch a couple of times. It was kind of weird.

Speaking of strange, I think this is the first May-December romance I've encountered that features such a huge age gap. Thomas is 72 and Alpha looks like a 20 year-old super model. I don't know her android age, but I kept trying to picture my grandfather running around like a stud and it just wasn't happening. I know, I know, Thomas was supposed to look twenty years younger than his age due to medical science, but he was still a geezer in my mind.

That kind of disconnect with the romance alone was enough to keep me from raving here, but then the plot let me down too. It was clunky and predictable, with very little interaction with the Sunrise Alley rogues. That was disappointing, since I kept expecting Thomas and Alpha to make a visit to the android's secret lair. Then I kept hoping that Thomas would have a fatal heart attack and they'd have to copy his brain into an android body resembling Fabio. No such luck.

terrific science fiction
The National Information Agency Director of the Office of Computer Operations Lieutenant General Thomas Wharington is elated that the major threat to world domination by the malevolent genius Charon is over as the villain is dead (see SUNRISE ALLEY). However, he also fears the threat to mankind remains viable as Charon's "offspring" the super brilliant android Alpha still lives to carry out her master's plan.

He needs to learn her secrets to neutralize her, but no sentient being can "read" body language as she can. This frightens and attracts Wharington, who finds his desire for the beautiful AI leading to mistakes. Alpha captures Wharington and takes him to Charon's secret island location. To his shock Wharington finds his worst nightmare awaits him.

Though there is an abundance of too many unsolved subplots left dangling, ALPHA is a terrific science fiction thriller that fans of Catherine Asaro will appreciate. The story line is fast-paced and can stand alone as the back story is somewhat summarized in the opening sequence. The Wharington-Alpha confrontation is deftly handled as both finds an attraction interfering with their respective prime directive though the android deals with it better. Readers will enjoy this saga and look forward to the meshing resolution of other threads.

Harriet Klausner