Friday, June 21, 2013

Review - Inferno

Title: Inferno
Author: Dan Brown
Publisher: Doubleday (May 14, 2013)
Format: Hardcover; Pgs 480
Genre: Suspense
Source: Library
Series: Robert Langdon #4

To me, Dan Brown’s books are more about the places than the mystery. Granted, the suspense that surrounds Inferno is interesting, but the places are what kept me turning the pages. Maybe I am easily enthralled, but from time to time, I actually felt like I was looking at the exhibits and running down the streets with Robert and Serena.

Historian and Symbologist Robert Langdon wakes up in a hospital room with no memory of how he got there. He has been told that a bullet had glanced the back of his head and he will have to rest until his memory returns. Unfortunately, an assassin has different plans and as she is walking down the hall shooting the doctor in her way, Robert and Serena are forced to rush out a side door and their flight for life begins.

That is the driving force of this book. A storyline that involves a madman who has left an image in the vein of Dante’s Inferno that warns of the end of humankind if something does not happen soon. A video that has been designed to be released to the public with a cryptic message and the World Health Organization playing God as to what the public needs to know. This is what compels Robert and Serena to figure out the endgame while there is still time.

It is no shock that our planet is running out of resources, so when a scientist decides that enough is enough he disappears for a year and comes up with a plan. Will Robert thwart it in time or will those around him distract him enough and the world will have to deal with the consequences.

It is a curious conundrum that makes you wonder what we have not been told and if it is quite possible for a single person to take matters into their own hand and save our planet from ourselves.

I am not a conspiracy theorist so I take Dan Brown’s books at face value. I enjoy the adventure and pace. I enjoy the people and places and more importantly, the conversations that I have had with others about this book.

1 comment:

kayerj said...

I liked the book too. I googled the places as I went because I like to look at the images. Dan Brown uses a lot of detail in his description and adding the image to his words really takes me to places I know I'll never see. I thought the book had an open ending that left it up to me the reader to decide on the morality of the issues. It was a tough one and I'll confess I didn't like the way it made me feel. But hey the story was great.