posted
So, it turned out I was first on my library's list and got this puppy on release day for free. Given the length of the wait, I figured I'd actually need to read it ASAP, just to be polite.
Finished the book this morning, here are my thoughts.
- It's on par formula, pace and chapter-wise with all of DB's other work, which means it's a lot less exciting when you a. read lots of books and are desensitized b. are desensitized to DB's books in particular (and are thinking "here we go again" instead of getting suckered into the story). But if you don't read a lot of thrillers, it's probably quite good. The jerking you around every few pages, adding something else to jerk you around then answering something works with his microscopic-sized chapters. DB's other books were a lot more exciting when I was 17, I think.
-Hating Dan Brown, like hating Twilight, seems to be a popular pastime among people who read a lot and like to show they have taste. I didn't see what irked people so much back in 2003-2004 but I get some of it now. I think saying these books are the "worst ever" is just mean spirited hyperbole. They are likable work and popularity snowballs.
-The book got off to a slower start than some of the other books, addictive by the end, but I had zero desire to stay up to finish it, I actually put it down to sleep when DB "killed" off Langdon. Of course, I suspected that he didn't really kill him and I was hoping for the sake of the story he did because the not really dead thing has been overdone.
-This book actually had plot after the crisis was over, which is a rare thing in action books these days.
-Despite DB being an Exeter Alum and now quite rich himself, I don't think rich people actually talk or act like they do in his book.
-The "Noetic science" subplot, was, as far as I could tell, pointless, weird and stupid. Add this to the list of books that don't get Science or Scientists or how they talk or how it works, throwing enough big words* around to get some "smart" cred and ending it there. I read Deception Point far too long ago to remember who he treated the science there, but I think it was a lot better.
-Also, no one I know of in academia teachers or talks like that. I even work at "smart" school with "snob" value that has "distinguished" faculty. Can you all take my assurance that people who go to and work at and/or attend "liberal elite east coast institutions" are not like that?
-The DaVinci code references were quite gratuitous. Also, he re-used the sin-cera thing from Digital Fortress.
-DB was incapable of using the word "penis", instead favoring the smirk inducing "sex organ" when mentioning castration. No one was having sex in this novel or thinking about sex in this novel, save for a minor character calling in a favor to someone whose suits she rebuked (but no sex). Yet another example of sex versus violence chastity that rubbed me the wrong way.
-DB still manages to walk the fine line between expose with the Masons while making sure they are never evil in the end. I suspect real masons will be annoyed by minutiae. DB also seems to pander to religious groups that have found his other stuff offensive.
All in all, not bad, not amazing, something I wouldn't read twice. I think of the three Langdon books, Angels and Demons was the best.
*Big pet peeve. One character is described as having taken a picture with a "super cooled charged coupled device" and was able to detect "energy" from a faith healer. I work with "supercooled charged coupled devices" from time to time. So basically, CCD==digital camera, and while I don't know what range of the electromagnetic spectrum she was looking at, I am certain the supercooling did not help.
Posts: 1757 | Registered: Oct 2004
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quote:Hating Dan Brown, like hating Twilight, seems to be a popular pastime among people who read a lot and like to show they have taste.
I think it's more an inevitable consequence of having taste.
In the same way, you will find very few gourmands who will wax nostalgic over the salty, grainy, waxy mouth-feel of government-issue processed cheese.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Hating Dan Brown, like hating Twilight, seems to be a popular pastime among people who read a lot and like to show they have taste. I didn't see what irked people so much back in 2003-2004 but I get some of it now. I think saying these books are the "worst ever" is just mean spirited hyperbole. They are likable work and popularity snowballs.
If I'm honest, I think a good portion of my distaste is precisely due to the popularity. If Dan Brown were an obscure author, I'd probably be able to read his books and enjoy them. I definitely wouldn't think of them as being very good, but it'd be great trashy reading. Quick, snappy, plot drags you along with little effort on your own part, good reading when you feel the need for first rate garbage. (a lot of R.A.Salvatore's fantasy books do the same for me)
But when I have conversations with friends who venerate him, and worse, have them quote "facts" from his books as if they were true, the snooty literary elitist in me dies a little. These are the same people who "don't have the time" to read Gaiman or Le Guin or Zelazny, even when I give them books as presents. At the same time, I don't want to be the kind of asshole who's constantly criticizing his friend's tastes (they're wonderful people otherwise) so I turn my repressed fury on Dan Brown instead.
It's sad, but that's life for you.
(Twilight seems to fill the same niche with my female friends)
Posts: 2222 | Registered: Dec 2008
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posted
Would I get in trouble if I wrote a novel with the following plot outline?
------
Stephanie Meyer was enjoying her view of the Salt Lake temple and the Karl Malone estate, sipping wassail and wondering if her capri pants were appropriately not-quite-form-fitting, when her husband started chuckling across the table as he read something on his laptop and ate a Cafe Rio salad. Suddenly he started to choke, and Stephanie panicked, slipped in her spilled beverage and couldn't save him. He was dead. In shock, she dialed 911 then slowly became aware of what her husband was reading: an Internet message board where some spiteful punk mentioned that nobody deserved literary fame and success less than Dan Brown but got it anyway, except one person: Stephanie Meyer.
Irrational rage filled her. Dan Brown was better? Mr. Dan "CERN is a fanstastically luxurious nerd amusement park" Brown? She knew one thing: Dan Brown must die.
---
Dan Brown was caressing the rich leather that wrapped every object in his private study, visions of Masonic antigravity technology dancing in his head, when his house exploded. He flew through the air in a froth of debris, luckily managing to use his velvet smoking jacket to snag the top of a nearby utility pole, which absorbed his momentum and allowed him to slide to the ground. He ran for his northeast emergency escape pod while hearing a mysteriously feminine scream: "I'll get you Dan Brown!" As the pod whisked him through titanium tunnels toward NORAD he checked the GPS-enabled vital signs telemetry app on his iPhone and crumpled into despair as he realized that everyone he loved had been killed in the explosion. In his grief he still resolved that the mysterious woman would meet his wrath.
---
*many breakneck chases, including a ride in an experimental replacement for the Space Shuttle through the Grand Canyon (which is revealed to be a message from the ancient Havasupai who could command the movement of water - could this explain Noah's flood?), and then a near-deadly delve into the Great Pyramids which turn out to be nodes in a vast interstellar teleportation network. And someplace with ice and oxygen canisters.*
---
Meyer held the knife steady against Brown's throat, ready to slash should he so much as twitch the top secret U.N. gamma blaster. She had learned so much about this man whom she had pursued, and in turn fled, for what seemed like forever. Hard to believe it had only been three and a half hours since her husband took his last breath. The resolve to see him die began to waver, but she steeled herself. Could she bear the deadly insult she had read, without some kind of retribution? Surely not. But then he spoke. "I only wish you had killed me alone, instead of destroying all the people I loved."
She gasped. "I didn't mean to kill anyone else. I thought you lived alone!"
"So foolish...I don't know why I've been fighting you. Finish it." The gamma blaster clattered to the floor.
Her own grief flooded in, displacing her rage like a Havasupian geoscaping torrent. she dropped the knife and clung to Dan, sobbing "I lost my husband too...I've been so angry...I didn't mean--" she choked, unable to continue. She sobbed, and Brown slowly raised his hands and folded them around her.
He finally rasped "Maybe...maybe there's hope. This grief is so strong right now, but if we can survive a week, or two...that's a really long time. Longer than I can imagine a story lasting. Surely a new story will start by then?"
Meyer heaved in a ragged breath. "But...everything is different now. We've learned secrets that can change the world, but this world isn't worth saving. We get no respect. Sure, we have fans, but we won't have time to write any more books because we'll always be on the run."
He bowed his head in sad agreement. "You're right, I know..." Then he looked up with a steely glint in his eyes. "But there's something we can do...something that must be done."
---
Michael Bay trembled in the dark, knowing that all of his misdeeds were about to be visited upon his own head. There was nowhere left to run, no giant robot who could save him now. He succumbed to a vision of all the film auteurs he had crushed along the way, as he amassed his dark influence. Still, he wept only for himself, in the final moments as the pyramid was teleported to 5 kilometers above his lair, and allowed to crash to earth. Crushed in turn.
---
Meyers and Brown, cocooned in the fusion powered craft, shot away from the site of the impact, dodging the edge of the shockwave. They sat in silence as they plunged around the curve of the horizon, pondering the mysteries of fame, conspiracy, and romance. Serenity was lost, but adventure seemed boundless. It'd have to do.
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
There is no way that Michael Bay would die underneath a falling pyramid without a) commenting on its awesomeness; and b) BLOWING UP.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Originally posted by scifibum: Would I get in trouble if I wrote a novel with the following plot outline?
Her own grief flooded in, displacing her rage like a Havasupian geoscaping torrent. she dropped the knife and clung to Dan, sobbing "I lost my husband too...I've been so angry...I didn't mean--" she choked, unable to continue. She sobbed, and Brown slowly raised his hands and folded them around her.
He finally rasped "Maybe...maybe there's hope. This grief is so strong right now, but if we can survive a week, or two...that's a really long time. Longer than I can imagine a story lasting. Surely a new story will start by then?"
Meyer heaved in a ragged breath. "But...everything is different now. We've learned secrets that can change the world, but this world isn't worth saving. We get no respect. Sure, we have fans, but we won't have time to write any more books because we'll always be on the run."
He bowed his head in sad agreement. "You're right, I know..." Then he looked up with a steely glint in his eyes. "But there's something we can do...something that must be done."
My first thought was that they were going to sleep together, not kill Michael Bay.
Posts: 1757 | Registered: Oct 2004
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quote:Hating Dan Brown, like hating Twilight, seems to be a popular pastime among people who read a lot and like to show they have taste. I didn't see what irked people so much back in 2003-2004 but I get some of it now. I think saying these books are the "worst ever" is just mean spirited hyperbole. They are likable work and popularity snowballs.
If I'm honest, I think a good portion of my distaste is precisely due to the popularity. If Dan Brown were an obscure author, I'd probably be able to read his books and enjoy them. I definitely wouldn't think of them as being very good, but it'd be great trashy reading. Quick, snappy, plot drags you along with little effort on your own part, good reading when you feel the need for first rate garbage. (a lot of R.A.Salvatore's fantasy books do the same for me)
But when I have conversations with friends who venerate him, and worse, have them quote "facts" from his books as if they were true, the snooty literary elitist in me dies a little. These are the same people who "don't have the time" to read Gaiman or Le Guin or Zelazny, even when I give them books as presents. At the same time, I don't want to be the kind of asshole who's constantly criticizing his friend's tastes (they're wonderful people otherwise) so I turn my repressed fury on Dan Brown instead.
It's sad, but that's life for you.
(Twilight seems to fill the same niche with my female friends)
I didn't know my current set of friends when the other set of books came out, having gone from high school to grad school by way of college in the interim time, so I don't know if they worshipped DB back in the day, long since having moved on to other things. The new set are voracious readers, but they read enough books not to think it's the only thing out there. As for the high school set- we had Harry Potter to obsess over back then.
Posts: 1757 | Registered: Oct 2004
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