The "lost symbol" is not fact. FACT!

This post may contain spoilers. Scattered spoilers because I am not going to review the book periodically.

I have lasted longer than most when it comes to Dan Brown. Yes his stories are basically all carbon copies but its a good story right? The pages turn quite quickly, helped by page long chapters and the characters are wonderfully one dimensional and simple to understand. I thought this was all I needed, I was wrong.

With both The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons I enjoyed the story. I enjoyed the conspiricies, the locations, the mad rush against impossible deadlines and the occasional threats faced by the characters. The Angels and Demons twist even surprised me.

With Lost Symbol I did not have a care in the world for any of the characters, the conspiricies, the locations and the mad rush was muted and pathetic partly because the actual reason for the rush is not revealed until the first last minute, when it is also miraculously stopped. Who saw that coming!

Brown also attempts to present all the theory, religion and science as fact. Techncially yes, everything he mentions exists. His referencing of it suggests he spent rather too long researching on wikipedia but the theories exist. My my main issue with this novel is with noetics.

Now Noetics is a science, yes. There are some people who believe it, yes. But there is no proof of it. It is just a theory and a wild one at that and far too much of the novel is focused on trying to make you believe it is real. After all, why begin with the fact statement if everything you write is a like of jumped up, fictional drivel?

Oh, and the twist, if you can call it that.

The only reason it might not be obvious is that the character lies to himself in his own internal narration. There is no reason for him to do this storywise, its just a poor attempt to hide the truth from the reader.

This will be the last book I read by Mr Dan Brown. They work better as films anyway, which does not say much for the contents of the books.