Dan Brown, The Lost Symbol
Let's start with the question every Dan Brown fan wants answered: Is The Lost Symbol as good as The Da Vinci Code? Simply put, NO. The book is entertaining but the ending needs some revisions. Can I insert my own ending, Dan? I read in a review or two, which stated, “Just read the first 450 pages and then put in your own ending.” The Lost Symbol isn't a bad book, but it is a letdown for Dan-followers.
The Lost Symbol begins with an ancient ritual, a shadowy enclave, and Masonic secrets. Again, Harvard professor Robert Langdon finds himself in predicaments that require his vast knowledge of symbology and his superior problem-solving skills to save the day. The setting is stateside, where returning hero Langdon comes to Washington to give a lecture at the behest of his old mentor, Peter Solomon. When he arrives at the U.S. Capitol for his lecture, he ends up all over town decoding this and that and on a quest to find the Ancient Mysteries. With every entertaining plot twist, they are roughly where you would expect them. We learn how the nation's capital is filled with mystical symbols and sacred buildings. Deadly chases careen back and forth, across, above and below the nation's capital. Kathleen, Peter’s younger sister, and Langdon dart from revelation to revelation, pausing only to explain some piece of wondrous, historical and secretive artifact. This is the plot for most of the book.
But this book has a few flaws. For one thing, the CIA is involved because of a potential revelation that could have catastrophic implications for national security. Only when the Ancient Mysteries are revealed, it just wasn’t that disreputable. The nation and the world could survive just fine. But the whole book centers on a CIA story, which just seems a bit silly in the end. I felt as if he wrote down ideas that came to him on little scraps of paper and pasted them all together, or he found some cool places on Wikipedia and tried to tie the story together with scotch tape. The scotch tape had fallen apart by the last page and the author’s deadline had come and gone. Like many people, I found this book to be entertaining most of the way through, but was disappointed by the ending. Of the five Dan Brown novels, this is my least favorite.
The Lost Symbol begins with an ancient ritual, a shadowy enclave, and Masonic secrets. Again, Harvard professor Robert Langdon finds himself in predicaments that require his vast knowledge of symbology and his superior problem-solving skills to save the day. The setting is stateside, where returning hero Langdon comes to Washington to give a lecture at the behest of his old mentor, Peter Solomon. When he arrives at the U.S. Capitol for his lecture, he ends up all over town decoding this and that and on a quest to find the Ancient Mysteries. With every entertaining plot twist, they are roughly where you would expect them. We learn how the nation's capital is filled with mystical symbols and sacred buildings. Deadly chases careen back and forth, across, above and below the nation's capital. Kathleen, Peter’s younger sister, and Langdon dart from revelation to revelation, pausing only to explain some piece of wondrous, historical and secretive artifact. This is the plot for most of the book.
But this book has a few flaws. For one thing, the CIA is involved because of a potential revelation that could have catastrophic implications for national security. Only when the Ancient Mysteries are revealed, it just wasn’t that disreputable. The nation and the world could survive just fine. But the whole book centers on a CIA story, which just seems a bit silly in the end. I felt as if he wrote down ideas that came to him on little scraps of paper and pasted them all together, or he found some cool places on Wikipedia and tried to tie the story together with scotch tape. The scotch tape had fallen apart by the last page and the author’s deadline had come and gone. Like many people, I found this book to be entertaining most of the way through, but was disappointed by the ending. Of the five Dan Brown novels, this is my least favorite.
Labels: Books and movies
Posted by Sean
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