More Like a Lost Opportunity
My review on Amazon.com
As it turned out, Dan Brown had squandered a golden opportunity to enthrall his readers with this much anticipated Robert Langdon novel. He also managed to mar his reputation as a serious writer and entertainer with the exceedingly bad characters, including Robert Langdon's, with which this book is rife. As much as I enjoyed reading Angels and Demons and The Da Vinci Code, I'm afraid Mr. Brown has "lost" me with this one.
With that said, I did enjoy some aspects of the book. I'll start with what I liked first.
Dan Brown is known to load up his books with a ton of research on the subjects in question (i.e. Vatican, Rome and Catholicism in Angels and Demons; Christianity, Paris, Jesus and Knights Templar in The Da Vinci Code) and this book is no exception. I really enjoyed reading about the Masons and their history and rituals. I also got to learn about Noetic Science, which I didn't realize existed prior to reading this book. Brown's descriptions of Washington D.C. and the Capitol were immersive and fascinating in the same measure.
But then we had to deal with characters and plot, which brings us to the portion of this review where I get to tell you what I didn't like about the book.
Aside from the fascinating research, everything else was one bad joke after another. The characters, especially Robert Langdon's, were vapid to put it lightly and sadly inconsequential. For the better half of the book, Langdon was inexplicably balking at concepts that a man with his experience (from Angels and Demons and Da Vinci Code) would simply not have. Seriously, most of Robert Langdon's lines were a variation of, "yes, but that doesn't make sense" that's shortly thereafter followed by, "God, now it all makes sense."
And to add insult to injury, the plot was a mess. It was too predictable, weak and embarrassingly contrived.
I was really disheartened to see such cheap and amateurish work put out by a writer with such a huge platform. You may enjoy reading this book just for the research that's put into it. But if good character development and believable plots are important to you, The Lost Symbol will end up being lost time you wish you get back.
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