Dan Brown - Inferno

In his international blockbusters The Da Vinci Code, Angels & Demons, and The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown masterfully fused history, art, codes, and symbols. In this riveting new thriller, Brown returns to his element and has crafted his highest-stakes novel to date.
In the heart of Italy, Harvard professor of symbology Robert Langdon is drawn into a harrowing world centered on one of history’s most enduring and mysterious literary masterpieces . . . Dante’s Inferno.
Against this backdrop, Langdon battles a chilling adversary and grapples with an ingenious riddle that pulls him into a landscape of classic art, secret passageways, and futuristic science. Drawing from Dante’s dark epic poem, Langdon races to find answers and decide whom to trust . . . before the world is irrevocably altered.

Comment: I got this book practically two years ago but as it often happens with many of the books I buy, it got stuck in the shelves. I finally decided to read it, especially since I've read the one that came after this one, also featuring the main character Robert Langdon, and because I liked it well enough, I've thought about giving this one a try too.

In this adventure, Robert Langdon wakes up in Florence with no idea of how he ended up there and in a hospital to top it off. However, not soon after he wakes up with some sort of recent amnesia, certainly caused by a concussion, he is attacked in his bed, one of his doctors dies and the othr one helps him escape despite his physical condition.

Then, a chase against times begins and Robert must find why he is in this situation, why he is having weird dreams and why everything seems to be connected with the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri and a possible plague against the world...

I was quite curious to read this book because I knew there was a movie about it too (my edition even has Tom Hanks and Felicity Jones on the cover, although Felicity is brunette and her character Sienna is described as blond, how annoying it is, right? but anyways...) and I wanted to be able to see it after reading the book which - any reader would say about 95% of the movies based on books - is always the best course of action.

This is another fast paced story mixed with a lot of historical and cultural information and that is truly captivating.

I do think that the best part of Dan Brown's books, especially his most recent work, is how he manages to teach or inform the readers about certain facts in a very interesting manner. I happened to be able to read the book while often being near a computer and it's quite fascinating to google some of the things and process them like that.

Besides the adventure side of things, though, the author always focus on a little detail that somehow pertains to humanity in general. In this book the cause of everything is based on the premise that the planet is overpopulated and will continue on being so in the future until one day humans can no longer survive as they have so far. 

I'll say that the author has done a great job putting this question in the open and creating a great plot about that. Even more so, he has found a way to discuss (and control) the problem in a way that would ensure life wouldn't end in an inferno scenario as described by Dante in his work.

Of course there's the ethics of things but in a case of humans being acutely in need of survival, wouldn't it be a viable option? I must say the solution Dan Brown proposes in the figure of the book's villain is both clever and merciful and probably why the story felt as amazingly done for me.

As for plot, well, of course there isn't much to discuss there. The plot of this book is pretty much the same as his other work, except for the setting and the amazing end.

I liked there's a twist which surprised me even if there are other elements that are a little too exaggerated or difficult to accept as being realistic (for instance, why Robert is in that specific hospital... which we only learn why close to the end) and overall that made me not see this as a scarier story in terms of anticipation. I could see the building up of the drama and the adrenaline of the characters' movements but it didn't have such a big impact on me, personally.

I really think the author was very clever with this story. I also liked learning about Dante and I bet the majority of readers who have not read his Divine Comedy thought about it. It also made me want to visit Florence but that isn't only Dan Brown's influence.

I would say this is a book to recommend, not for the writing itself which is as easy and basic as one can expect but mainly for the cleverness of the ideas debated and the end.

By the way, I won't be seeing the movie unless is free on TV since I just saw plenty of reviews criticizing how different it is from the smart book. Why do producers do that...oh well.

Grade: 8/10