What with the 6-year long hiatus after The Da Vinci Code, expectations were soaring high and I had pre-ordered TLS from flipkart. Dan Brown has used the same recipe to cook up a concoction of secret societies, symbols and mysteries. Only this time Robert Langdon is in Washington, D. C. (his love interest is all but 50 years while Langdon is struggling to keep fit at 46) where he gets involved in a chain of events and scours the city in search of the mystery of the ancients, safely guarded for centuries by the Freemasons – a society that takes in members under strict vows of secrecy. But the master of thrillers fails to weave a convincing plot and I felt as if I were reading some cheap thriller. The symbology cocktail that he has come up with is hardly a page-turner. It is a silly thriller at best with an implausible plot and nothing close to the unputdownable stuff like DVC or A&D. Dan Brown paints very violent scenes of torture – which will not only make you shudder but also make you wonder how credible all of this is! When one of the characters climbs 555 steps of a staircase 10 hours after his arm was cut off or another one goes upto the Capitol Building’s extreme top hours after half her blood has been drained off, it seems a tad too far-fetched. Not just a weak storyline that doesn’t hold, the novel suffers from poor characterization. The characters are very weak and lack motivation. Of course it is full of all sorts of fundas related to symbols and beyond and lots of gyan thrown in between every sentence uttered – to the point of boring the reader! Dan Brown has lost his sharpness and wit. He has become boring and sounds encyclopedic. Finally, the ending… the ending of the story will leave you utterly disappointed.
Having said that, Dan Brown’s broth of chasing clues and solving puzzles is thought-provoking this time as well. The book points to the enormous power of the human mind. The concept of noetic science, so far unheard to most of us, is another interesting part. Insights on technologies like TLV or thermal imaging were some consolations at least – reminding us of the cool writer Dan Brown used to be!!
All in all – although the Dan Brown factor is missing, Dan Brown fans will be reading this for sure. After all the book is selling like hotcakes!
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