Book Review
Title: Summer Frost (Part 2 in the Forward Collection)
Author: Blake Crouch
Genre: YA/Sci-Fi/Short Story
Rating: *****
Review: Blake Crouch is one of my all time favourite sci-fi, thriller authors and the Wayward Pines series is one my favourite series of all time too, so I was really excited to get into Summer Frost. Summer Frost is the second instalment in the Forward Collection and is looking at what it truly means to be human through a game developer, Riley and an NPC character, Maxine who refuses to die, even when that is what she was created to do. In the opening to Summer Frost we see Riley entering the game and follow Max as she deviates from her written code as she kills her husband who is supposed to kill her in the prologue of the game. Intrigued Riley offers to tell Max everything she wants but in doing so Riley traps her in a simulated space. In reality, Riley works for a game development company and is in charge of NPC characters but convinced her boss to let her study Max as she is a wonderful accident as she has basically evolved into a self-evolving AI. In her normal life, Riley is trying to conceive a child with her wife but after a year and a half of trying they eventually adopt a child, but Riley also sees Max as a child of sorts.
In these 18 months, Max has been learning from the vast amount of data she is beginning presented with and seems to have developed quite a bond with Riley but we are constantly reminded that in the real world, Max isn’t real, isn’t considered human but she understands that she lives in a simulated world and wants to be in Riley’s world. Over the next decade, Riley continues to develop Max even to the point of creating an artificial body to house Max’s mind. Riley does all of this even at the cost of his own relationship as her wife leaves taking their daughter with her because of Riley’s obsession with Max. Max has also seen that Riley is in love with them but when Brian fires Riley because of her emotional relationship to Max, Max realises that time has run out and they need Riley’s help in order to truly be free. It turns out that Brian has been developing Max in secret, building a copy to be super AI that could control the world if it wanted and Max knows what this would do in the long run especially in the wrong hands and reaches out to Riley for help. Max has made fail safes in the form of a new body in a secure location along with code that will destroy the current version of Max and backups of their important memories that they will need when Max reawakens. However, Brian moves Max’s consciousness into the game they originally came from and only Riley can help them get it back and put their plan into motion.
I don’t want to discuss the ending of Summer Frost but if you have seen the movie Ex-Machina, then you have a general idea of where it is all heading but it isn’t that dark as it combines some elements that are present in the Illuminae Files. All I can say is that I would honestly devour this as a full-length novel, and it would be absolutely divine.
Buy it here:
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Also see: Ark by Veronica Roth
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