Dan Brown is one of the most popular and controversial authors of all time. His novels such as The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons have been read by millions and have outraged at least as many. Is he one of the best writers ever? No. his style is repetitive, he fills his books with unnecessary details, and may or may not know what the hell he's talking about at times. But it'd be foolish to say he doesn't write effectively, creating memorable thrillers that take advantage of renowned artwork, conspiracy theories, and beautiful European locations to appeal to the world traveler and adventurer in all of us.
While he's widely known for his conspiracy theories about the Catholic Church and secret societies such as the Freemasons, Illuminati, and Opus Dei, his new novel departs from that. Inferno, released May 14, deals with the imagery of Dante's most known work, but not necessarily with clues left by the author. Da Vinci's works had iconography that revealed a conspiracy, but in this, Brown uses Dante's words and imagery to reveal the plans of a psychopath.
This novel follows the Robert Langdon Formula, however, so it is very similar to the others. The Robert Langdon Formula dictates that the novel opens with a murder (in this case, a suicide), has Langdon awake from a nightmare, and get called in to decipher a bunch of codes and symbols to track down a psychopath. The difference here is that Langdon has retrograde amnesia, having been shot, not knowing why he is in Florence and what he is looking for. He eventually finds a few clues and discovers that the mystery deals with Dante's Inferno, as well as artwork by Botticelli and Vasari.
The first half of the novel is good, both fast-paced and entertaining. It may be a bit manipulative, but the plot drags you in, and that's what it needs to do. Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon meets up with the beautiful and genius Dr. Sienna Brooks, who proves to be a surprisingly interesting character because we know so little about her. It's revealed that she has an IQ of over 200, but she leaves far more questions than answers, and that's a good thing in a novel like this.
As good as the first half is, the second half is just as bad. The plot slows down to tie up loose ends with how Langdon got to Florence and how and why he got shot. This section was necessary, of course, but it slows down the novel and makes it dialogue-heavy and actually very confusing. The twist that comes in this part makes no sense and is completely stupid and terrible. Dan Brown's Robert Langdon novels always have some sort of grand twist at the end, revealing that someone whom Langdon trusts is in fact malevolent or something like that, but this twist goes so far as to render the first half of the novel completely pointless. It's made even worse by the conclusion. I don't want to give away anything, but essentially nothing that happened in the novel meant anything; Langdon and Brooks followed all the complicated clues left behind by the villain to really no avail.
As dumb as this novel is and as unsatisfying as its conclusion is, it is still entertaining. Even the expository dialogue is at least somewhat entertaining, and it brings up an interesting moral dilemma that poses perhaps a greater moral gray area than anything in any of Brown's previous novels. That is a slight problem, however, because page-turners don't typically deal with gray areas. When reading a George Smiley novel, you know damn well the Russians are bad, and the mystery comes not from the why but wondering who is the mole. Not all thrillers are like this, however, as Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness dwells almost entirely in a gray area of morality, but that is almost an exception as far as thrillers go, and needless to say, Dan Brown is no Joesph Conrad.
There are far worse novels to read, and certainly more boring ones, but Inferno is far from great. I wouldn't quite say "abandon all hope all who open this book" but this is mediocre by Brown's standards. Angels & Demons was a Grade-A thriller and The Lost Symbol wasn't far from it. I'd rank this closer to The Da Vinci Code and Digital Fortress as his weaker efforts. While you won't be able to predict the outcome, you'll probably wish after reading it that it was the one you predicted. I'm not saying it's terrible, because the journey to that point is a lot of fun, so I'd say it's basically completely average.
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