Inferno - Dan Brown

2013, 611 pages. Book 4 (out of 5) in the Robert Langdon series. New Author? : No. Genres: Thriller, Historical Fiction, Puzzle Solving. Overall Rating : 7½*/10.

It's great to be in Italy! Robert Langdon has visited here a couple of times in years past, and he has thoroughly enjoyed sightseeing in Florence, his present location. There are all sorts of museums, cathedrals, and palaces to explore, many dating back to the 13th century, when city-stares like Florence and Venice were at the height of their power.

Alas, Langdon is currently in a hospital room, under medical observation. The nurses and doctors tell him a bullet grazed his head and he's lucky to be alive.

That probably explains why he doesn't remember how he got to Italy, nor why he even decided to travel here. According to the medical people, the trauma of a brain injury from being shot in the head often induces amnesia, sometimes temporary, sometimes permanent.

But it doesn't explain why someone is trying to kill him. Nor why someone, presumably the same gunman, has just burst into his hospital room and shot one of the doctors dead, simply because he made the mistake of getting between Langdon and the shooter.

What’s To Like...

Inferno is the fourth book in Dan Brown's fantastic thriller series featuring lecturer and historian Robert Langdon. Book 2 in the series is the mega-bestseller The Da Vinci Code, the book that got me hooked on Dan Brown. Here, as always, the action starts immediately, the thrills are non-stop, and our hero has to solve a bunch of riddles and save the world, all the while avoiding getting killed by one or more trained hitmen.

You can tell that the author meticulously researched the three settings in the story: Florence, Venice, and Istanbul. I felt like if ever I found myself lost in any of those cities, I could use this book as a map.

The book's title is of course a reference to Dante's Inferno, which I've never read. A lot of the puzzles that Langdon has to unravel are based on that classic, and the author works a synopsis into the storyline via a backstory and one of Langdon's lectures. You'll learn a little bit of Italian along the way, and a smattering of Turkish. I found the etymology of Purgatory and quarantine to be quite fascinating, so too my discovery that "H+" has a second meaning besides the chemist's "hydrogen ion".

The 611 pages are divided into a whopping 104 chapters, plus a prologue and an epilogue, so there's always a good place to stop for the night. I found it to be a fast read, but not necessarily an easy one since there's a lot "tour guide" type of descriptions of the settings.

There are plenty of plot twists over the last quarter of the book, which is something I think Dan Brown is a master of. The ending is a mixed bag. On one hand it's unconventional, and it was refreshing to read something other than the usual "just in the nick of time" thriller ending. OTOH, a lot of the plot threads are left dangling, and unless Book 5 in this series resolves those threads, the ending here leaves you wondering what happens next.

Kewlest New Word ...

Quatrefoil (n.) : an ornamental design of four lobes or leaves, as used in architectural tracery, resembling a flower or four-leaf clover. (Google-image it.)

Ratings…

Amazon: 4.1/5 based on 30,644 ratings.

Goodreads: 3.85/5 based on 475,002 ratings and 37,222 reviews

Excerpts...

When Langdon arrived at the event, he was met by the conference director and ushered inside. As they crossed the lobby, Langdon couldn't help but notice the five words painted in gargantuan letters across the back wall: WHAT IF GOD WAS WRONG?

"It's a Lukas Troberg," the director whispered. "Our newest art installation. What do you think?"

Langdon eyed the massive text, uncertain how to respond. "Um ... his brushstrokes are lavish, but his command of the subjunctive seems sparse. (pg. 104)

“I'm in some trouble, Jonas, and I need a favor." Langdon's voice sounded tense. "It involves your corporate NetJets card."

"NetJets?" Faukman gave an incredulous laugh. "Robert, we're in book publishing. We don't have access to private jets."

"We both know you're lying, my friend."

Faukman sighed. "Okay, let me rephrase that. We don't have access to private jets for authors of tomes about religious history. If you want to write Fifty Shades of Iconography, we can talk." (pg. 344)

“I've heard of denial ... but I don't think it exists." (pg. 279)

There are a couple quibbles, but no show stoppers. First off, you'd better love chase scenes, because the one here goes on for the first 450 pages, and that's literally 3/4 of the book. Similarly, you'd better like info dumps, because there are a slew of them here about the three settings, their history, their buildings, and the various artists who lived there in the Middle Ages.

The R-rated stuff is pretty much limited to a smattering of cusswords. I counted ten in the first 20% of the book, and these are of the milder ilk.

Lastly and leastly, the main storyline is about a plague and this being 2020, the last thing I wanted was a story that would increase my pandemic hysteria. But this book was published in 2013, long before the term "Covid-19" existed, so Dan Brown can hardly be blamed for my bad timing in reading this.

If you can make it through the seemingly never-ending chase scene, you are rewarded with 250 pages of as good of a thriller as anyone can write. And even if Inferno doesn't quite measure up to The da Vinci Code, well, so what? I for one am glad Dan Brown made the attempt.

7½ Stars. Dan Brown endures a lot of flak spouted by people who consider him a hack writer. A smidgen of it might be justified, but it's more than offset by his abundant talent for penning exciting stories. More than 475,000 readers have left a rating on this book at Goodreads, and more than 37,000 of those took the time to leave a review. He may not be Shakespeare, but there are lots of people, including me, who are drawn to his books.

The Voynich Cypher - Russell Blake

   2012; 268 pages.  Book 2 (out of 2) in the Dr. Steven Archer Cross series.  New Author? : Yes.  Genre : Action-Thriller ; Suspense; Conspiracies; Puzzle-Solving.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

    They had one job.

    To guard an insignificant canister (about the size of a thermos) that’s in a secret room inside a sleepy, nondescript abbey in Italy.  It should've been an easy task for three heavily-armed commandos – one inside the room, one outside its door, and one on the grounds of the abbey.  It doesn't matter that they’ve never been told what the canister holds.

    The job's not new; it's been going on for four centuries now, and no one's ever tried to steal the object.  After a while, even the best-equipped protectors can let down their guard just a tad.  Take a short nap.  Listen to music on an iPod.  There's never any excitement.

    Until tonight, when someone somehow has stolen the canister.  And now the Order of the Holy Relic, who own and occupy the abbey, who hired these guards, and who have been entrusted by the Pope himself to safeguard the canister’s mysterious contents, are in a high dudgeon over the theft.

    And when you steal from the Church, there’s going to be hell to pay.

What’s To Like...

    The storyline of The Voynich Cypher is built around a real document called the Voynich Manuscript, and which can be justifiably called the "Holy Grail of Cryptography".   You can read the Wikipedia article about it here.  The story's structure is very similar to that of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code: the Roman Catholic is guarding a centuries-old secret, somehow it gets compromised, our heroes unwittingly fins themselves in possession of the secret, and they spend the rest of the book going from place to place, solving riddle after riddle, getting ever closer to uncovering the cosmos-changing secret, while also trying to stay one step ahead of bad guys and other rivals.

    For the most part, The Voynich Cypher takes place in various cities in Italy, and I was particularly impressed with the vividness with which Russell Blake portrayed that country.  Maybe he’s lived there; in any event, it certainly didn’t feel like a Wikipedia cut-&-paste job. Our two protagonists, Dr. Steven Cross and Natalie Twain, are fun to tag along with, and there are enough thrills, spills, chases, and puzzles to keep the reader turning the pages.

    The author lists  the place and time settings for the first couple chapters at their start, which was quite helpful.  I enjoyed the (obligatory) Knights Templar tie-in, and was pleasantly surprised by the brief nod to Mithraism, a long-forgotten religion.  Russell Blake blends the historical background of the Voynich Manuscript into the story in bits and pieces.  To a certain extent, this felt like an info dump, but I suppose it was necessary, since most readers will be unacquainted with it.  The author apparently doesn’t think much of tattooed Goth girls, Jack Kerouac, and Allen Ginsberg, and I got a chuckle out of that.

    I’m a big fan of situational ethics, so I was intrigued by the stealing of the “secret”.  Despite the excitement which ensues, I couldn’t help thinking that ultimately the Church had every right to try to recover the property that was stolen from it.  Curiously, the storyline sides with the thieves (the secret is said to be “liberated”, not “stolen”), and at times I found myself rooting for the agents of the Church to foil our heroes.

    The ending is adequately exciting, though not overly spectacular.  It had one interesting plot twist, but I was expecting it, since the reader knows all of the bad guys have to eventually be accounted for.  Some of the baddies are dispatched with a bit too providentially.  Ultimately, nothing in the world changes, but that sort of letdown is inherent with any book in this genre, including The Da Vinci Code.

    There are 42 chapters covering the 268 pages, which works out to roughly 6 pages per chapter.  The R-rated stuff is mostly cusswords, plus a couple of adult situations.   The number of secondary characters felt “just right” to me; not too many, not too few.  The Voynich Cypher is a standalone story, as well as the second book in a series.  It was published in 2012, and Russell Blake has never since added another installment to the series.  Inquiring minds would like to know why.

Kewlest New Word ...

Dispositive (adj.) : relating to or bringing about the settlement of an issue (such as the disposition of property).  (Heh.  I thought it was a goofy way of saying “negative”.)

Others : Dongle (n.).

Excerpts...                                

    “I think it’s him.  I trailed him from the flat.  I wish we had some photos so we could be sure,” the man muttered into the mouthpiece between puffs.

    “We’re trying to get access to the motor vehicle database for a license photo, but there’s nothing else I’ve been able to find.  The man obviously isn’t much for social media.  Pity.  Facebook’s made everything easier…”  (loc. 1618)

    “Where have you been?  It’s like you’re miles away.  Hello…”

    “I’m sorry.  I’m probably still tired, as well as a little surprised by …well… by this.”

    “Are you complaining?”

    “No.  Quite the opposite.  I mean it’s-“

    “If you find my company too distracting, we can always go back to being platonic colleagues,” she offered.

    “I’m not sure that would work,” Steven countered.

    “It had better not.”  (loc. 3424)

 “That’s the price of a soul these days?  I would have sold mine a long time ago if I’d had any idea you could get that kind of money for one.”  (loc. 4533)

    There are some quibbles.  All the characters are predominantly black or white; I like gray characters.  I felt there were a couple of missed opportunities for thrills and spills, most notably the demises of a pair of the “white-hat” secondary characters.

    There were one or two showing/telling issues, although not to where it got annoying.  And the author and his editors never could decide whether it’s a “duffel bag” or a “duffle bag”.  (Hint: it’s “duffel”.)

    But I pick at nits.  Overall, The Voynich Cypher kept my interest from start to finish, and didn’t strain the limits of believability, like some Action-Thriller do.  If you're looking for something to satisfy your "Dan Brown" itch, this book will do the trick nicely.

    8 Stars.  Subtract 2 stars if you don’t like books that are knockoffs of bestsellers like, say, Jurassic Park, Sherlock Holmes, Fifty Shades of Grey, or The Da Vinci Code.  Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and I personally like such derivative efforts, provided they are well-done.

The Lost Symbol - Dan Brown

   2009; 639 pages.  New Author? : No, but it’s been a while.  Since before the start of this blog, actually.  Book #3 (out of 5) in the Robert Langdon series.  Genre: Action-Thriller; Mystery; Puzzle-Solving.  Overall Rating : 7*/10.

    For Robert Langdon, it was great to be back in Washington DC.  Especially since it was an all-expenses-paid trip, courtesy of his lifelong mentor and friend, Peter Solomon, who's invited him to be a guest speaker for the night.  In the US Capitol building, no less.

    Of course, it was all on very short notice.  Something about the originally scheduled speaker suddenly being unable to make it.  So Langdon was kind of a back-up option.  Still, having a private jet pick him up and fly him  to DC was quite the experience.  As was a sleek Lincoln Town Car limousine waiting to whisk him from Dulles Airport to the Capitol.

    That was when things got just a little bit wonky.  Because when the limousine dropped him off, and Robert Langdon made his way to Statuary Hall, where the lecture was to be held, it was dark.  And empty.  And in checking with the Capitol officials, there was no lecture of any kind scheduled for tonight in the building.  Maybe this was somebody’s idea of a joke.

    But if so, the jokester had sunk a lot of money into pulling it off.

What’s To Like...

    The Lost Symbol is equal parts action, intrigue, and puzzle-solving, and delivers plenty of each from the get-go.  Dan Brown switches up the POV’s to keep things hopping at a crisp pace.  There aren’t a lot of characters to follow in this 600+ page book, so the ones that are here get developed nicely.  I was particularly intrigued by Inoue Sato; you could never be 100% sure exactly whose side she was on.

    There’s only one setting for the book : Washington DC.  Indeed, towards the end of the book (page 622), Robert Langdon remarks that it’s only been ten hours since he landed in DC.  So the book's entire time frame is amazingly short.

    If you’re fascinated by the Masonic Order, with their 33 hierarchy levels and their rumored metaphysical secrets, this is the book for you.  Ditto if you’re curious as to how Particle Physics might dovetail with ancient Mysticism.  And of course, there are a slew of puzzles that need solving to save the world.

    With 134 chapters to span the 639 pages, there’s always a convenient place to stop reading for the night.  I was happy to see my Gnostics get worked into the story, as well as a brief plug for blogging.  Even Aleister Crowley gets a brief mention (who?), and it was kewl to see Melancolia 1 here too.  The acronym “TLV” was new to me (it means something quite different if you work in Regulatory Affairs), and it was fun to learn the origin of the word “sincerely”.

    There’s a little bit of cussing, and of course a requisite amount of violence and killing.  This is a standalone novel, as well as part of the Robert Langdon series.

Kewlest New Word...

Suffumigation (n.) : the burning of substances (such as incense) to produce fumes as part of some magical rituals.

Others: Putti (n., plural).

Excerpts...

    One mortal man had seen Mal’akh naked, eighteen house earlier.  The man had shouted in fear.  “Good God, you’re a demon!”

    “If you perceive me as such,” Mal’akh had replied, understanding as had the ancients that angels and demons were identical – interchangeable archetypes – all a matter of polarity: the guardian angel who conquered your enemy in battle was perceived by your enemy as a demon destroyer.  (pg. 14)

    As a young girl, Katherine Solomon had often wondered if there was life after death.  Does heaven exist?  What happens when we die?  As she grew older, her studies in science quickly erased any fanciful notions of heaven, hell, or the afterlife.  The concept of “life after death,” she came to accept, was a human construct … a fairy tale designed to soften the horrifying truth that was our mortality.

    Or so I believed …  (pg. 487)

 “Death is usually an all-or-nothing thing!”  (pg. 47)

    For all the thrills and spills in The Lost Symbol, there were some weaknesses.  First of all, there are a slew of info dumps: about the Masons, New Age metaphysics, the layout of Washington DC, the mystical “eye” on the back of the $1 bill, etc., and for the most part, they’re awkwardly dropped into the storyline.

    No one seems to perceive that Dr. Abaddon’s  name is obviously phony – it’s an old synonym for Hell or the Devil.  And you just know that when one of the characters is introduced as being “plump”, she’s going to get killed off somewhere along the line.  Why not just dress her in a Star Trek red shirt?

    Also, there is a kewl bit of situational ethics introduced at the end, when the showdown between Peter Solomon and Mal’akh takes place.  Alas, the author chickens out in resolving it, allowing an act of God to make the decision instead of the humans.

    But the main problem with The Lost Symbol is the big secret itself.  The bad guy wants it.  The Masons are willing to die to keep it a secret.  And the mighty CIA lives in mortal fear that us commoners will learn about it.  Yet when it finally is disclosed to the reader, it’s really no big deal and it’s really not that big of a secret.  Anyone who’s ever dabbled in Metaphysics 101 will already be familiar with it.

    What a royal letdown.

    7 Stars.  I remember The Lost Symbol being panned as a literary flop when it came out.  True, it had to follow Dan Brown’s mega-hit, The Da Vinci Code, an almost impossible task.  The haters are justified; it is a poorly-written book with an ending that is mediocre at best.  But the Dan Brown loyalists are justified as well.  The writing may be mediocre, but the nonstop-action storytelling itself is top-notch.