Inferno

And so it begins...

When I made the resolution I was busy reading Inferno, the fourth installment of Dan Brown's Robert Langdon action/ adventure series. While not an avid Dan Brown fan I have read the previous three Langdon books and thoroughly enjoyed them, albeit that I found they raised philosophical questions and concepts which I tend to avoid. This one started off a little differently from it predecessors. It literally began with all guns blazing and the pace never really tailed off from there. Despite this I found it quite a laborious read and made fairly slow progress over the first half of the book until the backstory started to unravel. In the latter stages I was utterly gripped. I would term it a page turner, except that unusually for me I was reading it on my kindle so it was more of a button presser.

I don't want to reveal too much about the plot, nor to spoil the ending, but I will say this for Brown : with this book he had me thoroughly stumped. Unlike with the Lost Symbol, where I predicted every twist and turn in the plot from almost the first page, I had no idea where this book had come from or was going to and this feeling persisted until the very end. There were twists and turns aplenty right through the book and distinguishing who was a friend and who was a foe was nigh on impossible as the plot sped away at a pace that would make Usain Bolt look slow.

Without giving too much away the basic premise is that a very rich and intellectual geneticist has enlisted the help of a covert organisation to conceal him as he creates a biological weapon to curtail the proliferation of the human race. The WHO has discovered this and enlisted the help of Professor Langdon to decode the clues he has left and find out where and when this weapon will be deployed and stop it before it's too late. Unfortunately Langdon has had an accident and is suffering from temporary amnesia and cannot remember what his mission is. All he knows is that he has within his possession an object which leads inexorably to an image of Dante's Inferno and this is where he heads, with the assistance of a pretty young doctor called Sienna, to whom he owes his life from almost the first page of the book.

So to answer some very pertinent questions:
1. Am I glad I read it? Yes
2. Would I read it again? Probably not
3. Marks out of 10? 7
4. Did it live up to my expectations? No. The ending was more of a fizzle than a bang and I was somewhat disappointed by it. I also found the book harder to engage with than the previous installments. However it would be worth it if you're after a good read with more thrills than frills and enjoy the adventure and intrigue of a classic Dan Brown.

Enjoy

Bookaholic