The Fortunate Fall by Cameron Reed (book review).
I heard about The Fortunate Fall back in the 1990s, and now it’s getting a reprint this year. Cameron Reed, writing as Raphael Carter at the time, is now publishing under her real name. Maya Tatyanichna Andreyeva is a camera (small c). Actually, she is a cyborg, equipped with various chip inputs that allow people to share her feelings as well as see what she sees as a reporter.
Connected to her at a distance is her new screener, Keishi Mirabara. Mirabara has similar links but her job is to monitor the camera and, for lack of a better word, censor what goes online as needed. After all, you don’t want to experience all of Maya’s activities. A lot of the opening chapters consist of banter between them after a report as they get used to each other, showcasing their capabilities. Basically, Mirabara can appear next to Maya like a hologram and, in public places, be seen by other people.
Bear in mind that Maya’s main job is to interview dissidents in Russia, and we see mostly the distillation of this. This time, it is with Ivan ‘Pavel’ Voskresenye, and the way it is written bears some resemblance to what we see now and know of Russian society—especially since having chip links is illegal there.
On her way to a second interview with Voskresenye, Maya is arrested by the Postcops, leading to a startling interrogation situation set in Russia, until she is rescued by Mirabara infiltrating their computer system.
Up to this point, the story follows a logical path, but then Reed turns everything upside down, making it increasingly difficult to reveal more without spoilers.
I can tell you that the title The Fortunate Fall refers to what initially seems like bad luck but turns out to be the right course of action. Reed gives several examples, often biblical. If Eve hadn’t taken a bite from the apple, both she and Adam would have been stuck in Eden rather than being on Earth, breeding mankind. She also uses TV references from our time period, which I doubt would have been remembered in the future but are probably used to make a connection with us.
That’s probably the only remaining sanity. Considering that Voskresenye seems to be living in a land-locked Russian city, why is he working with whales? What Mirabara truly is also ventures into spoiler territory. It’s almost as though when Reed changed her mind, she abandoned all the good ideas about Russian suppression that would have put this book on par with 1984.
You do get carried along by the story because Reed writes excellent dialogue, and I doubt that my comments will make much difference to a book written in 1998. I do think it could have done much better, and she missed out on a rare opportunity to explore the world of being a living camera.
GF Willmetts
August 2024
(pub: TOR, 2024. 287 page small enlarged paperback. Price: $19.99 (US), $26.99 (CAN). ISBN: 978-1-250-32669-0)
check out website: www.TorPublishingGroup.com
