Ajay Chowdhury, best known for his Kamil Rhaman crime series (which started with The Waiter and now runs to 6 books), goes techo-thriller in his new standalone novel Eden Falls. This book takes a couple of fairly high concepts and embeds them in a puzzle-based chase story across the US. And while there are plenty of plotholes and not-quite believable coincidences, Chowdhury hopes readers are turning the pages too fast to notice.
Eden Falls has a couple of cold opens before the main action begins. These involve a group of students finding a meteorite while high on mushrooms and then the academic who discovers that the meteorite might be something much more significant. Cut to Aisha and Adam, newly married and on their way back from India to America due to the sudden death of Caleb, one of Adam’s friends. Adam mysteriously disappears from Delhi airport before he can get on his flight. Before he does so he pings a message to his old flame Sara and asks her to help Aisha. Sara and Aisha then have to reluctantly join forces to stay ahead of the FBI, Indian secret police and an evil techbro to rescue Adam. To do so they have find the technology that Adam stole and that Caleb hid at various spots around the country using puzzles to protect their whereabouts.
There is a lot going on in Eden Falls. One strand of the plot involves a new form of AI called Manx which people can have implanted in their brains. Aisha for some reason has agreed to have this procedure done making her vulnerable. There is also a resistance movement opposed to Manx which Sara is a part of. Aisha is an English professor who specialises in James Joyce and Adam and Sara are both theoretical physicists (Adam has won the Nobel Prize) so there are plenty of mathematical puzzles and literary sparring. And all of Caleb’s puzzles have something to do with Albert Einstein because… it’s cool? Caleb was a former CIA agent so his obsession with Einstein does not make a lot of sense.
The whole adventure is very much in the Indiana Jones/Robert Langdon mould (only without the archaeology). It is a search for a world changing Macguffin that takes our two heroines from location to location. At each location they need to: solve a puzzle, fight bad guys (techbro goons, FBI and rogue Indian secret service agents) and then escape. And, of course, with each step they take the stakes get raised and they realise how much they have come to rely on each other. Along the way Chowhudry gets to have his characters debate the rights and wrongs of AI and the dangers inherent in creating a “superintelligence”.
Overall, Eden Falls is fun but slight. Chowdhury clearly understands the tropes and beats of this type of thriller but follows them a little too slavishly so that some of his more unique elements are a little lost. So while Chowhudry considers some deep questions this is not likely to be a book that readers will think much about after reaching the final, fairly predictable, page.
Eden Falls by Ajay Chowdhury
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