The Lost Symbol

I just finished reading The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown’s newest book and I thought I would share my thoughts and opinions on it. I had read his other four books and liked them all quite well. After the great success of The Di Vinci Code, there was probably a lot of pressure on Dan Brown to live up to people’s expectations and to deliver a finished product by a predetermined deadline. The main character in The Lost Symbol is Robert Langdon, the same character from The Di Vinci Code and Angels & Demons. Unlike the first two novels Langdon doesn’t solve all of the puzzles and in fact doesn’t solve much in the story. Most of the information comes from the narrator and other characters who are teaching Langdon. I feel like Dan Brown did a lot of research on this book as with his others but couldn’t find a way to meld it into the story as in the other two books featuring Langdon and as a result this book seems fractured. I see the book in two parts, one the fictional action and secondly a part that discusses history, religion, philosophy and science. The first part was on par with most other action novels out there, similar to a James Patterson novel. The second part felt like a really interesting lecture. I enjoyed both parts but I would have liked a better mixing of the two parts, that is what made his last two books so great. Of course there was some mixing of the two parts but not nearly as seamlessly as in the previous two books and was really obvious in the last few chapters where Langdon is just being talked to and nothing really happens in the plot. As a result of the lecturing part of the book I have added several new books to my list to read and I have been thinking about a lot of things in a new way. Overall I liked the book and would recommend it to others to read.