Rating: 1.5/5 stars
Well, Dan Brown has done it again! He wrote a book full of riveting information, numerous cliff-hangers, and absolutely no character development. Shocking!
Professor of Symbology and Religious Iconography at Harvard University, Robert Langdon is the man best suited for the job of deciphering old Masonic codes and clues to obtain something the Masons have kept hidden for hundreds of years. A mad man literally hand-picks (read the first few chapters of the book and you’ll know what I mean) Langdon for the harrowing and life-threatening journey around Washington D.C. to solve this Masonic riddle for his own egotistical desires.
After reading three of Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon stories, I am in no rush to read anymore. While reading The Lost Symbol, I found myself constantly comparing the contents and writing styles to those of Angels and Demons and The DaVinci Code. Dan Brown may be extremely well-versed in everything hidden and unknown to the regular person, but I find his writing style superficial. Cheap cliff-hangers and “next-steps” are obvious when keeping in mind his other Langdon novels. I kept thinking to myself while reading “he’s done this before” and followed the thought by an eye-roll. A cliff-hanger awaits the reader at the end of every chapter, which is great for the bestseller action/adventure page-turner that sucks the reader in, but I still felt cheated with tricks. That being the case, Brown does take care to enlighten the reader to subjects that not many people understand or even have ever thought of before.
My revulsion at the writing style was over-ridden by my desire to know more about the mysterious Mason group I’ve not heard anything about. I admire Brown’s enthusiasm to bring light to a topic that has been shrouded in mystery and Dan Brown uses this important concept as a plea to the reader that no one should judge another person’s beliefs or actions if we do not understand those beliefs or actions. One of the most striking passages from the novel includes his students gasping at the “Death Shrine” which is common in Masonic practices and Langdon rebutting with a remark on worshipping a crucified human body (often bloodied), drinking his blood, and eating his body – a common Catholic practice. By the end of the book, I was happy I knew more information about obscure theories like Noetics - thought and intuition affecting the real world - which Brown forces to entwine into the novel through yet another love interest, but I was still not impressed by the book as a whole.
The information was great, but I still have something to complain about. Such obscure information is complicated to try and fit into a working novel, so I can’t be too harsh here, but I sometimes felt over-whelmed when characters spoke. As a novelist, I’m sure it’s hard to decide how to make certain information known, but I am also sick of Brown using paragraphs of dialogue to explain a certain idea. I found those sections of the book very tedious. That is why I enjoyed the scenes when Langdon and his students were in class discussing difficult topics.
As fun and exciting as The Lost Symbol is, I can’t bring myself to want to read it again. For now, I’m done with Dan Brown and if I ever want to know about any obscure topic or idea, I’ll just read about it on Wikipedia.
