Tight military/espionage/AI drama from Sriduangkaew. It’s online here.
Rinthira is paid a visit by an ex-lover, Colonel Chatsumon. She had hoped her days working for the military were over, but the war has caught up with Rinthira, as has Phiksunee, the embodied AI whom imprinted on her in its/her infancy.
Intimate relations with Chatsumon are resumed overnight, and there is a tight denouement as what they had hoped was an impregnable remote hideaway for Rinthira is compromised…
The background to the development of the AIs, the geo-politics, the description of the setting, and the characterisation are all top notch, without the author getting anywhere near overdoing of the literary flourishes as is sometimes the case.
