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Showing posts from November, 2016

Inferno by Dan Brown

Contradictions. All the way. I really love the character of Robert Langdon - he is the personification of all things romantic about growing up to be a hot professor dealing in history, mythology and all things mysterious with a touch of science (a bit of an Indiana Jones minus the brashness). I love Brown's plots concerning Renaissance-era artists and their quirks. I love the settings. I love the puzzles and their conspiracy-theory explanations. I love the pace too. But. When I put all of these together, why am I underwhelmed? The stories have all the ingredients of being a blockbuster of a book, and somehow they fail. The charm of The Da Vinci Code seems like a one-time hit, and a re-hash of the concept seems like a wasted attempt.  Maybe that's what it is. A blockbuster, I mean. At a time when, as a friend put it, apocalyptic doomsday seems to be the flavour of the season, mixing centuries old references with the present ominous environment seems like deja vu . His