Dan Brown is the notoriously controversial author of The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons. In those books, his character Robert Langdon explored and challenged Christian symbolism and ideals while running away from the evil church and people of power who didn’t like him challenging their faith and ideas.
Dan Brown brings back Langdon in The Lost Symbol to challenge everything in America’s history and perception of itself. He draws upon history and symbolism to introduce the reader to another side of what we believe to be true about our nation’s forefathers. Dan Brown also introduces his audience to new views on science and into the secret lives of Masons. This time around, Langdon goes to Washington, D.C. to deliver a lecture and gets caught up trying to rescue an old friend while trying to avoid the CIA and a psychopathic puppet master.
The book is an easy and entertaining read. The ideas, history and science Dan Brown introduces are always interesting to contemplate. However, the book definetly has it’s weaknesses. In one instance of disbelief, Langdon is running from the CIA while another character Katherine is running from the psychopath. They both, by sheer coincidence, end up finding each other at the same building. It is a bit too unbelievable. The science and history are interesting until you realize that their introductions are kinda vague. It leaves the reader wondering how much Dan Brown has embellished to keep his story interesting. I won’t even go into the improbability of the ending surprises that left me a little irked.
I also felt the book was a little preachy for the Masons. Sure, it introduces the reader to a group that is supposedly shrouded in mystery, but since this is a book of fiction, I guess I would have to research elsewhere to really know if Dan Brown knows what he is talking about.
Read this book for the entertainment value. Don’t read it hoping to really open your mind to anything new. Or if you do learn something, be smart enough to question where the author might have gotten his information.
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