Inferno by Dan Brown
Going in to the chapter 1 of Inferno, I didn’t have too high expectations. I was looking for a breezy page-turner with some anecdotes on sculptures, people, places intermingled with the story. However I was disappointed to see Dan Brown fail to deliver even that.
Anecdotes are way too many and completely irrelevant to the story. Many a times, the novel reads as Brown’s travelogue of places during his research, just there to increase the page count. I remember ignoring many paragraphs describing some sculpture or a building or a painting. Uninteresting. Plain boring. Do research Mr. Brown; just don’t force everything into a novel.
And there are so many discernible and ludicrous attempts at being relevant to the current tech-aware audience. All the references to iPads, iPhones, ebooks etc. fall flat, cringeworthy.
Finally to the story, what is expected is a mystery to be solved by Professor Langdon through the clues sprinkled in historic symbols. I feel the novel fails there too. Codes and clues are way too simple, straight-forward. Many don’t even lead something significant; they are just there to bring Langdon in picture. Inferno could well have been a sci-fi mystery novel instead of a Robert Langdon one. Disappointed.
My rating: 2 of 5 stars