Title: The Lost SymbolAuthor: Dan Brown
Year of Publication: 2009
Genre: Thriller
The first half was an absolute drag.
This from the man who brought us brilliant page-turners in the past! As a much-awaited sequel to the blockbusters Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code, The Lost Symbol has failed to live up to the hype.
Firstly, the entire concept of the Ancient Mysteries is beyond me - a power that can turn humans into gods, that power residing within one’s mind, can only be unlocked through some mysterious symbol, that symbol being only a word, and that word being a book hidden beneath an underground pyramid…. or was it an underground portal? Dan Brown is all over the place. The reader fails to understand what exactly is being looked for. Characters crowd the book without having any reason of being there. And I could not grasp the urgency of solving the mystery. There is no end-of-the-world-bringing subatomic bomb ticking (A&D) nor is there a solve-the-puzzle-and-clear your-name-before-the-police-catches-you sword hanging over the characters’ heads (DVC). The whole objective here is to rescue a Yale professor, someone the reader never feels sympathetic enough towards.
So one just can’t understand the significance of either the plot or the characters. I even found myself rooting for he bad guy at one point!
The only good thing in the story (other than a small plot twist towards the end) is Robert Langdon. The character is one of the few totally original personalities of fiction out there today, even though his claustrophobia is a little overdone now. Sadly, one doesn’t see enough of Langdon’s problem-solving skills this time (probably because there is not much of a problem here to begin with!).
Dan Brown, in the past, has specialized in bringing conspiracy theories to light and giving them a completely believable and realistic form. Here, however, he tries to find a connection between science and the supernatural, and, in my point-of-view, fails miserably. Like, in one experiment, a character is shown succeeding in measuring the mass of a human soul through a ridiculously childish experiment….?? Don’t get me started!
What can one say but that Dan Brown has completely botched it for once (or rather the second time; Digital Fortress was no plume in the hat either). Here’s hoping that something better is to come. And here’s wishing that this particular symbol had stayed lost!
Azma Humayun
Source of Image: http://images.smh.com.au/ftsmh/ffximage/2009/09/17/lost_symbol_narrowweb__300x462,0.jpg
Azma, having read The Lost Symbol about a month back, I clearly agree with you. I violated my cardinal rule to never read another work by the same author just for the sake of Dan Brown but throughout the book, I found the logic completely disparate.Da Vinci code was woven together cohesively but throughout TLS, I felt Langdon's interpretation of symbols was forced. Utterly illogical and incoherent...
ReplyDeleteSeems like a clear cut case of sell-out to me. The author new there was demand for another Robert langdon mystery so here it was. Old wine in a new bottle. And not even tasty at that.
ReplyDeleteHEHE. . now I know that the decision to not waste my time on The lost symbol was a good one. And the decision was simply because of the low quality of digital fortress and deception point.
ReplyDeleteThank you Azma for the review.