It took me a while to buy the world's fastest selling book, but I'm glad I did. Overall I have mixed feelings about Dan Brown, as I loved Angels & Demons, disliked The Da Vinci Code, and was utterly and entirely bored by Digital Fortress. But it's difficult to deny that he's the master of the puzzle-driven thriller, and a pretty good storyteller in his own right.
Like Angels and Da Vinci this is another novel involving famed Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, and follows the formula of the other two novels to a T. That makes the beginning pretty boring, as you're just waiting for him to discover some weird thing (in this case a severed hand) that leads him into this race against time and the authorities as he tries to uncover a secret hidden for centuries.
Once the plot does kick in, it's pretty entertaining. Brown made a wise decision to bring the action home to Washington, and instead of focusing on religious mysteries, focused on the hidden symbols and secrets of the Freemasons. As always, he uses just enough facts to make it not seem ridiculous, even though it of course is.
In this case, his partner is Katherine Solomon, a renowned noetic scientist and sister of the man whose hand was severed. I felt there was more going on with the characters than in the other two, mostly because Langdon already knew his partner. It allowed them to talk about the past, which Brown arguably takes too far. There are a lot of flashbacks in this novel, but they all advance the plot.
While being vague on the plot details in order to not spoil anything, I can discuss a few more things. For one, there's the villain. He's quite menacing, a huge, tattooed man who has terrorized the Solomon family for years for unknown reasons. If anything, though, he's too invincible. At first he was realistically menacing but a few times towards the end it got a little frustrating to me.
The mysteries are as intriguing as ever, bringing in new historical figures such as Albrecht Durer and Benjamin Franklin, as well as reintroducing Isaac Newton and the Rosicrucians. It's less about American history than I was expecting, and more about the Masons, which can either be a strong point or weak point, depending on what you want to read. Personally, I was looking for some more revelations about America. There is a twist that reveals why the whole thing is an issue of national security that I really didn't like. There were actually a few times I felt cheated in the novel, which I suppose you can expect from Dan Brown.
The ending is a strange one. It's both a disappointment and a good ending. I found the resolution to the plot to be really disappointing (and actually more or less given away early on), but I did like how the story concluded with the characters, so that's a plus.
I figured considering how huge this novel was when it came out in 2009 that everyone had read it, but a few people have asked me at school how it is, so that's why I decided to write this review. I'll conclude by saying it's pretty good, but not great. I'd recommend it, especially if you like Angels & Demons or The Da Vinci Code.
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