The Lost Symbol

I hate this book. Hate it. I've endured the book because I thought it had to get better, it's Dan Brown. Nope, it doesn't. I knew who the bad guy was, but I thought, it couldn't possibly be that simple. Oh. It was. The twist is revealed about two-thirds of the way through the book, the bad guy revealed and dispatched and then you're just dragged through the most boring, useless, arbitrary history lesson. Sure, Brown lectured us in Angels & Demons and in The Da Vinci Code, but that was interesting and woven throughout the story. This was just boring and frustrating. I so badly wanted the book to be over. These are some other things that annoyed me.

1. Robert Langdon. He was just annoying.

2. The absurd repetition. Explaining or describing things over and over again. It's as if Brown believes people are picking up the book at random chapters and need to be filled in along the way. I can't tell you how many times Mal'akh tattoos have been described. How many times the pyramid was described or other parts of the story repeated from albeit different characters, but not with any new information.

3. For smart people Katherine Solomon and Robert Langdon do some truly idiotic things.

4. Noetic Science is dumb. I don't need a Freemason version of ‘The Secret'.

5. Brown tries to inject suspense throughout the book by only giving some of the information then going to another chapter, leaving you wondering what was said or seen. For example, after Peter shows Robert the Ancient Mysteries Robert asks Peter to do him a favor as a friend. ‘Peter replies ‘Of course. Anything.' Langdon made his request...firmly.' But you don't know what Robert asks until the next chapter when you discover the favor was for Peter to go to the hospital. Really? That was the mystery? Get over yourself Dan Brown.

I'm pretty sure that Brown wrote this book to appease all the religious people he pissed off with his two previous novels. I'm going to have to ask him to knock that crap off.