Freedom by Mack Reynolds
Review by Robin Davies of the book, Freedom authored by Mack Reynolds
The book is set in Russia and Czechoslovakia, predominantly in Moscow and Prague. It is the story of a Russian operative who is sent to Prague to work undercover in an attempt to weed out insurgents. The story is about the conditioned and explicit ideas the man has due to his position in the Russian police and his training background when he is given the undercover assignment. His mental and emotional state changes over the course of time as he forms relationships with people and his world view expands with the ever broadening experiences he has with groups of people in Czechoslovakia from different life strata than his own.
Although the book opens in Moscow, and gives cadence to explicit and realistic details, it is a work of fiction. It is in the genre of a fantasy novel. The main theme that the book brings to light is the general truth about life and mankind whereby our relationships with others formulate our understanding of the world around us and the overarching importance of our consideration of weighing in on the truths of others with our own perceptions. The setting of the book has the feel of a post cold war era adaptation of events. There is a bar fight and a wild night of romance, running around different venues of town. There is the business of running an automotive company and clusters of people having discussions engaging in the exploration of subversive and mind altering ideas that expound on the general tone of the omnipresent political atmosphere.
The main character of the book is developed more than any other with a description of his physical characteristics and with the emotional changes that take place from the through the course of the story to the end. The author does a good job of describing the transformation of the character from one of staunch, clear-cut idealism to one of a more liberal thinker whose world view has greatly expanded. The main character’s change is due to a number of socio-political factors that could be due to a number of factors left up to the reader to decide upon and fill-in the blanks for themselves. Other characters are left open-ended and not described explicitly by the author. Their characteristics are more a reflection of how the main character interacts with them than being explicitly spelled-out. There is no other change in the other characters in the book that leads to any transformations that are expressly depicted in the story. The story is very much focused on the main character’s thoughts and interactions.
Having been to Moscow and Prague, it was very easy to follow along with the descriptions of the locale and streets and cities that the main character was traveling through. The main strength of the book is how the author eased into the story from the main character’s thoughts and perspectives and then ramped up through the physicality and intensity of his transformation. The author built a solid foundation through which the reader could get involved with the main character’s position and motivations. The writing quality was good at painting the picture and setting the scene. The pace of the story was variable and spilled over into a fast paced, albeit abrupt, ending. This is an original story from the perspective of its setting. It is based on general truths that extend in all of the human condition though. Not so much about the general concept of freedom, but about the general concept that one’s thoughts and feelings can be changed by outside influences, exposure to new thoughts, ideas and relationships. The book carries emotional impact. It is intriguing in pulling the reader along on the main character’s transformation. It makes one think of things such as love and risk and societal influence on our actions, thoughts and feelings.
I enjoyed the book and would recommend it to other people from a storytelling point of view. It is short and a fast read. I do have to withhold some reservation for the way it ended. It was as if the author got tired of writing and wanted to just wrap things up. There wasn’t a clear closure of concepts although the ending was definitive.
