The new Dan Brown novel was released today and so I decided to pick it up. It felt rather comfortable, a similar story to the other stories by Dan Brown that I have read: The da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons. I haven’t read his other work but Inferno follows a similar template: noted Harvard professor Robert Langdon tracks down yet another medieval mystery whilst being chased by unknown bad guys. This time it is not la Jaconde or the Vatican, it is Florence, de Medici, and Dante’s masterpiece of the descent to Hell: Inferno! The recipe works, right? Well, I will liken it to the movies of M. Night Shyamalan. Shyamalan burst onto the scene with The Sixth Sense but by the time you get to Signs, you weren’t all that impressed anymore. Same narrative devices, same pacing, essentially the same story that you are familiar with but it seemed, well, lacking and unconvincing. So while Brown provides wonderful historical information of beautiful architecture and art in locales in Italy, it lacks the punch of da Vinci Code. I am sure, though, that tourism to Florence will increase.
Stuff that I am interested in.