by Dan Brown
I’m so happy that 1. I didn’t spend time reading this book. Instead, I listened to it on audible. It was LONG, but at least I was walking, or washing dishes, and didn’t spend my otherwise precious reading time on this. Paul Michael, the reader, is quite adroit and I enjoyed his voice and inflections — and the subtle but effective switches between characters. But, I cannot say that I enjoyed the book as much as its reader’s voice.
At first, I was somewhat intrigued by the exploration of Symbology, Free Mason history, and some supposedly high-tech science research on harnessing human consciousness…. but it all turned out to be just like Dan Brown’s other books: inserting very elementary knowledge of all these fields and channelling such knowledge through supposedly learned experts in each field to “explain” away the twisted plot and connections between events. The bottom line, however, is that many many words are repeated and wasted to tell a potentially intriguing story that simply didn’t not live to that potential.
(For example: why would Langdon be forced to wear a blindfold to go to the “secret” place and experience pages of claustrophobia and doubts when the destination turned out to be somewhere he completely recognized — and should be recognizable by millions?)
Also, perhaps I’m just too jaded a reader for this — I completely predicted and guessed the identity of the villain a couple of hundred pages before it is revealed in the story.
The only bits that I enjoyed were the gruesome descriptions of tortures and deaths!
Fairrosa Cyber Library 