Summer Frost by Blake Couch is book two of six in the Forward Collection. Book one, Ark, was mediocre at best but Summer Frost blew it away by miles. Although a bit predictable and not too original, it’s still one of those stories that is classic in a sense that when people think of the distant future and science fiction in general, this is what usually comes to mind. Yes, stories about AI and talking/thinking robots can seem overdone similar to zombie novels and TV shows and so fortunately, all books in the Forward Collection are short. This forces the authors to get straight to the point and this is exactly what Blake has done here to great success.

“It’s no different from running a computer program on a multitude of hardware platforms. A simulation of you is still you.”

Max

I will say though that the introduction to Summer Frost was pretty neat. As a video game player once a blue moon ago, I think it’s actually quite hilarious for an NPC to have gone rogue. The author could have introduced the whole robot/AI thing a bunch of different ways but no one really suspects an NPC. Every role playing game has them and they are pre-programmed to react a certain way each and every time without fail. Until of course there is a glitch and here we are with Summer Frost.

The story is relatively easy to follow and everything was going very smoothly until the end when everything just went buck wild! It felt rushed and a bit unbelievable even for a story like this mainly because there wasn’t really a nice setup leading to it. I also wasn’t a fan of the whole “convenient” factor where a character is in a sticky situation and all of a sudden, factor “X” comes in to play and all of a sudden is able to solve the situation just because we are expected to believe so. Being a short read, I understand the need for speed but it just felt a little cheesy towards the end.

“I think, therefore I fear. And you made me this way.”

Max

I did experience a part in the story that made the hairs on my hand stand up. Anytime we imagine ourselves dealing with a robot, we’d like to think that they are just that, robots. They aren’t humans so they can’t possibly think and speak like us but when they do, that’s when things get interesting. Do we see the AI as having a male or female persona in our mind? Why would we do that knowing full well it’s neither? At a subconscious level,

Would I read Summer Frost if it was a full featured novel? I most definitely would.