The Lost Same-bull

Last night, I finished reading The Lost Symbol, the newest book from Dan Brown. Just in case the author's plain enough name has slipped your man, this is the follow-up to his megahit, The Da Vinci Code, six years in the making.

Dan Brown has always had a formula. Even though he didn't achieve superstardom with his first three books, they had a certain style to them that was still present even before his breakout book. He writes like an episode of 24, fused with an undergraduate lecture. That is, he writes short, staccato chapters rarely more than four pages long and often less, all engineered to end on a cliffhanger to pull you into the next chapter. (That's the 24 part.) But he also breaks narrative momentum a lot within a chapter to toss away a sometimes-relevant-but-often-not bit of trivia that fascinated him when it came up in his research. (That's the lecture part.)

There's no denying that there's something compulsively readable about the style, and yet his shallow characters and crude prose don't always make for a good book. Despite the popularity of The Da Vinci Code, for instance, his prior book, Angels and Demons, was far better.

But on to The Lost Symbol. That Dan Brown formula I've been writing about? Well, he follows it even more precisely in this book. This book is a virtual carbon copy of The Da Vinci Code, clearly crafted to try and re-capture the lightning in a bottle that was that book. You could almost imagine that Dan Brown died some time in the last couple years, and that some other writer was brought in to finish this book based off his notes -- a writer determined to slavishly, faithfully reproduce a book that Dan Brown would have written.

There's a brutal killer with an usual physical appearance. (The Albino of The Da Vinci Code.) There's another smart woman meant to be the intellectual equal of the main character, Robert Langdon. There's another authority figure trying to chase down Langdon while he tries to unravel the mystery.

And of course, the ever-present encryptions, puzzles, and symbols -- each designed to be first misunderstood one way before Langdon comes in to reinterpret them correctly.

For a while, you can forgive the repetition... there's something initially enjoyable about reading something familiar. But then, somewhere around the halfway point, the book begins a slow but determined journey off the rails. The concepts at play in the book try too hard to court the controversy of The Da Vinci Code, and really aren't that profound. One of the big reveals meant for the climax is blatantly tipped a couple hundred pages in advance. The "it's this; no it's that!" game begins to wear thin.

And perhaps the weirdest thing of all, the climax of the book comes off as almost some sort of strange apology to all the religious folks Dan Brown upset with The Da Vinci Code. Without going into any great detail that might ruin the book for those who want to read it, I think I can safely say that the final resolution of the book paints religion -- particularly Christianity -- in an incredibly favorable light. And yet it's a real backhanded apology, laced with a not at all subtle "you all take things too damn literally."

So all told, I'd have to say I would not recommend reading this book unless you're a major Dan Brown fan. But of course, if you are, you've probably already done so anyway. I'd call it a D+.