Dan Brown's the Lost Symbol
The Lost Symbol is Dan Brown’s latest novel involving Robert Langdon and probably won’t be any cause of controversy.
Much like Harry Potter fans awaited for extensive periods of times before their last piece into this fictional world, it had finally arrived with a plethora of prints. In fact it was one of t he most printed first editions of any book and generally any grocery store/book store/gas station? will have a copy of Brown’s latest book. Sadly, it’s generally a piece of shit.
While Brown’s writing style used to be superb, in fact it’s what drew me back to books after being forced to read ridiculous redneck based stories shoved down my throat in college. It would seem all the fame and fortune has gone to Brown’s head, as the writing style has completely changed to an embarrassing rambling mess. The chapters are terribly short and he skips from scene to scene like he was attempting to write a script for a film (this wouldn’t be all to surprising after just releasing two films).
On the other hand you have the idea and plot line in the story, which as always with Brown is bad ass. It has little bits and pieces of history, mixed in with fictional embellishments and blending it with fact to make it seem realistic. For some reason though Brown decided to make his main character, Langdon, a total dumb ass. Last I checked Langdon was something of a mix between James Bond and Indiana Jones, yet he can’t figure out a stupid symbol that looks eerily like the Internet nerd language “l33t”. As much as I would love to dabble into how it makes sense that would give away a pretty big piece of the story and I’m all for not ruining a book, even if it was extremely hyped up and not that great. The hints in this book are also not very subtle, often they are just smack down in front of you and when it’s ever so obvious, Langdon still doesn’t get it. Honestly this book feels like someone else was paid to write for Brown, as this is clearly not up to par.
The imagery in the story is still great, even if some of his details are a bit bullshit. For a prime example I can tell you riding on the Washington DC metro could never “lull” you to sleep. It’s like riding a roller coaster and generally has creepy/ridiculously drunk people on it late at night (I ride the thing every day).
Was it worth the read? Sure, but it wasn’t anything like Angels & Demons, which had to be Brown’s best book. Also please don’t relate the book and the movie together has they are pretty much nothing alike. Compared to some of the other garbage coming out now this would hit 4/5 burritos.
Oh, but you thought I was done ey?
Well supposedly there very well maybe hidden chapters from with in the book. If you noticed the plethora of hidden symbols and codes on the dust jacket, that’s because of a little contest they had for the release of the book. Various symbols would eventually be decoded and turned into a phone number (212 782 9515) and allow you to win 1 of 33 signed copies of the book. The recording no longer allows you to win but is that of the main villains words repeating “Verbum significatium, verbum omnificum, verbum perdo” in reverse.
Also located in the keyhole on the binding of the dust jacket is a very significant building that applies to the story. All of the items found on the dust jacket relate to the book or decode various things. Generally this seems to be what most of Dan Brown’s time was spent on, or he just has a pretty clever marketing team.
Supposedly when you extract a code hidden within the spine of the book you can also find there are hidden chapters in the book. Check out this Website to what they have to say, perhaps it was just in the English/European version of the book.
