While I have enjoyed most of Ms. Asaro's novels immensely, I felt that The Veiled Web attempted to bring together a number of genres, but succeeded at none. The romance (the primary genre of the novel) felt unbelievable, since Rashid was absent during most of the period during which the Lucia's romantic feelings allegedly developed. If anything, the heroine became enamored of the lifestyle, rather than the man himself. The attempt to bring action/adventure elements into the novel through the element of the kidnappers felt similarly half-hearted, since only the first and last attempts had any crumb of excitement, and the characters (particularly Lucia) barely reacted to the attempts. The science-fiction elements succeeded perhaps better than the romance or the adventure - but anyone interested in reading about the development of consciousness in artificial intelligence would be better advised to re-read Robert Heinlein's _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_.