Recursion

Blake Crouch is the most emotional sci-fi writer I read. In that regard, what he writes may be a great deal more accurate for his characters and NPCs. Danger, confusion, loss and suffering are more vividly illustrated in this book than in others, but quite resonant with his prior 'Dark Matter'. Oddly, I preferred Dark Matter's protagonist who was a bit more bumbly and challenged. 

However the scale of Recursion is a great deal broader. The entire planet is entangled in a quantum dilemma. At its best, this book gets us close to Michael Crichton level drama. Its take on 'time travel' is a very clever working on the order of Primer and Inception. 

There is a kind of blind naivete driving the ambition of the characters here that didn't ruin the book for me, but annoyed me for a time. And since this is a book about people's lives rather than the situational drama created by technological disruption I think it's something Crichton would have handled much better. The way the ordinary Joe protagonists in this cinematic drama handle their dilemma puts a locus on character that requires me to suspend disbelief more than I should. In other words, if you give somebody the talent, financial and technical wherewithal to change the world, and their ambition is actually to change the world, how do they end up so squeamish when they actually do change the world and people die? That said, I find the protagonists' reactions to the tragedies that ensue quite realistic in an oddly informative way.

What Recursion reveals, emotionally and psychologically is the extent to which people whose lives spin out of control tend to seek comfort and solace from an ever-shrinking circle of intimates. In Crouch's world, the keys to all survival are the hugs and kisses that only one person in the world can give and losing that person drains all meaning from life. Recursion is the illustration of what could happen when that person is erased or altered by memory. The world comes apart.