Robert Langdon, Harvard professor of symbology and religious iconology, arrives at the ultramodern Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao to attend a major announcement—the unveiling of a discovery that will change the face of science forever by answering two of the fundamental questions of human existence. The evening’s host is Edmond Kirsch, a forty-year-old billionaire, and futurist whose dazzling high-tech inventions and audacious predictions have made him a renowned global figure.
As the event begins, Langdon and several hundred guests find themselves captivated by an utterly original presentation, which Langdon realizes will be far more controversial than he ever imagined. But the meticulously orchestrated evening suddenly erupts into chaos, and Kirsch’s precious discovery teeters on the brink of being lost forever. Langdon and Ambra Vidal, the elegant museum director who worked with Kirsch to stage the provocative event, flee to Barcelona on a perilous quest to locate a cryptic password that will unlock Kirsch’s secret.—DoubleDay Books, 2015
Book Review:
Where do we come from? Where are we going? are the two repeated questions in this atheist’s wet dream. Full of conniving priests, murdering zealots, science, and social revolution leaning away from the Catholic church. Like in Langdon’s past adventures, we get a tour of a beautiful country and its landmarks. This time in Spain. And again a beautiful, intelligent, yet non-romantic female counterpart in Ambra Vidal.
Your curiosity about the answers to “Where do we come from?” and “Where are we going?” that Edmond Kirsch’s sabotaged presentation was supposed to answer, were the only thing that kept me pushing through the tedium of the storytelling. You never get a straight answer the first time around, it’s always, “OMG look at this! This changes everything!” or “I have something to tell you, something secret…and here it is”. Two chapters later you might find out what that is, and sometimes you never get the answer. Brown tried and failed to build tension and suspense with these gimmicks and only succeeded in dragging out a story that was already too long with repetition of the same information.
While the answers to the repeated questions were enlightening and delivered in a very engaging way, they are nothing that would shake the foundation of a religion that believes in virgin pregnancies and zombies, and not worth trudging through the action-packed, but monotonous storytelling. –-(Low) Borrow it
H.A. Worthington & Cat
