Mini Review – Summer Frost

From Goodreads:

A video game developer becomes obsessed with a willful character in her new project, in a mind-bending exploration of what it means to be human by the New York Times bestselling author of Recursion.

Maxine was made to do one thing: die. Except the minor non-player character in the world Riley is building makes her own impossible decision—veering wildly off course and exploring the boundaries of the map. When the curious Riley extracts her code for closer examination, an emotional relationship develops between them. Soon Riley has all new plans for her spontaneous AI, including bringing Max into the real world. But what if Max has real-world plans of her own?

I have been working my way through the novellas/short stories in this collection and I have to say they have been pretty awesome so far. This was my first taste of Blake Crouch’s writing and I will definitely be reaching for more. This was such a well thought out and interesting premise and even though it is short it really considers some big topics with real raw emotional quality to it. Its one of those fun, slightly scary in how believable it is sci-fi’s that really explores what it means to be human.

It is short but powerful, with big themes that follow you after reading but don’t seem to weigh down the plot. The dialogue between the main characters is beautiful. I would really recommend diving into this one.