{"id":8070,"date":"2019-10-14T09:30:31","date_gmt":"2019-10-14T13:30:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/?p=8070"},"modified":"2019-10-14T09:30:31","modified_gmt":"2019-10-14T13:30:31","slug":"inferno-by-dan-brown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/2019\/10\/14\/inferno-by-dan-brown\/","title":{"rendered":"“Inferno” by Dan Brown"},"content":{"rendered":"

Copyright 2013 by Dan Brown. Published by Anchor Books, a division of Random House LLC.<\/a><\/p>\n

This is the 4th book featuring Robert Langdon, the Harvard professor and expert in medieval symbols, the most famous being The DaVinci Code<\/em>. The plot in this one is centered on a brilliant genetic scientist who is a big fan of Dante’s Divine Comedy<\/em> and believes that the human race is on the brink of extinction due to overpopulation. His solution is to concoct a new plague that will “thin the herd.”\u00a0 He wants to kill a third of the people on earth.<\/p>\n

Initially Langdon’s role in thwarting this plot is unknown as he is, at the outset, suffering from amnesia.\u00a0 He wakes up in a hospital room in Florence, Italy, with no recollection of the three days prior.\u00a0 He remembers nothing after an evening walk across Harvard Yard.\u00a0 He is apparently is involved in something serious as shortly after he regains consciousness a young woman shoots her way into his hospital room, killing a doctor.\u00a0 Langdon barely escapes with his life in the company of another doctor, a young American named Sienna Brooks.<\/p>\n

What follows is an epic chase, through Florence, Venice and Istanbul, with Langdon barely escaping numerous times from a black-clad group of assassins who are just one step behind.\u00a0 This book has been made into a movie, apparently, and I can only imagine that it is one long, non-stop chase scene.<\/p>\n

My objection to the book, initially, was that the chase was implausible.\u00a0 A Harvard professor and a doctor successfully eluding a large team of assassins?\u00a0 My other objection was that it reads like a chase scene through a Fodor travel book.\u00a0 The chase visits all the great tourist sites of all three cities.\u00a0 Yes, it did make me more interested in visiting all three cities, but great tourism seems tangential to a plot to kill billions.\u00a0 My feeling, halfway through, was that Dan Brown must have been able to take some very long vacations in Europe and write it all off as “research.”<\/p>\n

So two-thirds of the way through, my opinion of the book wasn’t very high.\u00a0 But he saved up the best for the last third of the book.\u00a0 Nothing is quite what it seems.\u00a0 Unraveling what is going on – and who the bad guys are – becomes very engrossing.\u00a0 He is a fine storyteller and he kept me guessing in this one.<\/p>\n

After finishing the book I am left with just one complaint: that Langdon, despite being central to the plot, really doesn’t do anything to affect the outcome.\u00a0 The result would have been the same if Langdon had never left Harvard.\u00a0 But, still, the book was well-written and very thought-provoking.<\/p>\n

8 out of 10.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Copyright 2013 by Dan Brown. Published by Anchor Books, a division of Random House LLC. This is the 4th book featuring Robert Langdon, the Harvard professor and expert in medieval symbols, the most famous being The DaVinci Code. The plot in this one is centered on a brilliant genetic scientist who is a big fan … Continue reading »<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1VniU-26a","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8070"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8070\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8073,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8070\/revisions\/8073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}