Dan Brown is one of the few authors these days that will make me stop whatever I’m reading at the time just to pick up his new release. I loved The Da Vinci Code. I thought Angels and Demons dragged on a bit too much, but I still liked it. And the same goes for The Lost Symbol. With so many other reviews having already been posted about the story, I’m going to skip all of that rather than repeat what you probably already know by now. Instead, I want to concentrate on my own personal thoughts on this book.
At first, I was very excited to have Brown finally write Robert Langdon into a story that takes place on our own soil. Our capital was a great setting, but unlike his other books, I didn’t find myself running to the computer to Google the buildings and artwork so I could see them for myself like I did with the other Langdon books. I don’t know if it was because I was already familiar with the buildings and history or just because they really weren’t that exciting to me.
The thrill ride that Langdon goes on is pretty much the same as Brown’s other books and so it becomes very predictable. He moves his characters from place to place where they discover a clue that’s strange and peculiar. Langdon decodes it just before the bad guys get there and we move on to the next piece of the puzzle. And some of those pieces just weren’t as interesting either.
The array of characters, including the “bad guy,” were each strange and peculiar as well, leaving you wondering who is on whose side for a while. Brown is definitely good at characterization. From an obsessed, castrated villain covered in tattoos to a short and stern Japanese CIA agent with a deep raspy voice, the characters were both colorful and mysterious. The confrontation between Langdon and “the bad guy” was also much more intense in this book, and Langdon’s life was literally on the line this time rather than there just being a gun or fist fight.
I did feel like the book lacked a lot of those little interesting facts and theories that I couldn’t wait to discuss with fellow readers like the other two Langdon books had, those little nuances that you also couldn’t wait to Google which really gave the book some depth. The Lost Symbol definitely had them, but just not as many. Or they weren’t quite as memorable. In fact, thinking back now, the only one that sticks out at me is the part about where the word “sincerely” comes from and why we sign it at the end of letters.
In typical Brown fashion, there’s also this constant struggle between science and religion. In The Lost Symbol, we learn about Noetic Science and the power to control things with our minds. However, a lot of the writing about it was so bland and technical that I don’t even think Brown knew what to do with it which was literally why he “blew it up” to get rid of it. Also, after the villain is caught and all is well, there was still 60 pages left to the book which Brown spent talking mostly about God and the Bible. Most people I’ve spoke to just sifted through the ending after the climactic part had come to a close.
Overall, I’m not entirely disappointed with The Lost Symbol. I did like the Code better and will indeed read Brown’s next book if there is one. I just hope that Brown’s writing becomes much more layered and less predictable. His readers know this equation by now, and while it does sell books, it’s time for something new and completely different.
