• Dan Brown’s Inferno Review: Promised So Much, But Failed To Deliver

    // Gradly // blog, Books, Dan Brown, Reviews 1 Response

    Dan Brown's Inferno Review

    Dan Brown’s Inferno Review

    Don’t get me wrong, I think most readers will actually enjoy the book. It’s very much Dan Brown’s standard thriller that conforms to his secret recipe or, shall I say, his successful formula that worked greatly in his previous books; Robert langdon awakes in a strange city, accompanying by a pretty and intelligent woman, roaming around the city, solving puzzles, chased by some sort of assassins, a catastrophe that threatens humanity. These all are standard Dan Brown but despite all the expectations and promises the book potentially hold, it fails to deliver.

    Unlike the previous books, Inferno lacks the amount of puzzles and riddles that I, the readers, come to expect, this is where the chilling factor, that I was waiting for, failed to exist. In his previous work, Brown amazes us with things like Cryptix, 666, Pyramids, Obelisks, Ambigrams, Antimatter, etc, while Inferno has its share of cool things but in my humble opinion this didn’t come on par with his previous offerings.

    Albeit the secret group referred to as, The Consortium, it doesn’t hold the same wow factor for things like, The Priory of Sion, The Freemasons, Illuminate, Knight Templars, Holy Grail, Opus Dei, CERN. These were sexy topics in which Dan Brown managed to stand out mixing reality and fiction altogether. The absence of conspiracies, secret societies or covert esoteric groups is obvious in this book, unfortunately this was a theme that worked perfectly in the previous books.

    There are a lot of fascinating Renaissance ideas and philosophies that were available at Brown’s disposal were only addressed lightly or never mentioned at all such as Galileo, Alberti, and others. It seems like Dan Brown wouldn’t like to address the subjects he discussed in his previous work. I also felt some subjects were entirely forced; things like the use of Transhumanism move as scary topic feels completely unnecessary, the general theme of putting Overpopulation and Dante’s Inferno (recreating hell on earth) seems forced as well. However, I was expecting a thrilling journey that truly takes advantage of the seven sins and the nine circles of hell.

    But, this is still entertaining, with Brown’s own style of putting plot twists and turns getting readers hooked with every page turn to expect the unexpected. As always, readers will be overwhelmed by the amount of details, locations and the fascinating history behind them.

    Against all odds, Dan Brown still has the ability to keep readers up late at night reading ‘just one more chapter’, this is why the guy is so talented and where he really excels.

  • Inferno: The New Robert Langdon Thriller By Dan Brown

    // Gradly // blog, Dan Brown, News No Responses

    Robert Langdon's New Thriller: Inferno

    Robert Langdon’s New Thriller: Inferno

    Dan Brown, one of the world’s bestselling authors, will publish his sixth novel on 14 May, in a press release the publishers announced that Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor, will come back in a new adventure  through the “heart of Europe” this time round and centers on one of history’s most enduring and mysterious literary masterpieces, Dante’s Inferno..

    The title – Inferno – was revealed soon after the announcement by readers, who had been invited to use social media posts to help expose a digital mosaic. By posting on Facebook, or tweeting using the hashtag #DanBrownToday, readers’ profile images were added as tiles in a web graphic, with the title – alluding to Dante’s 14th-century poem – becoming clear as more images were added.

    “Although I studied Dante’s Inferno as a student, it wasn’t until recently, while researching in Florence, that I came to appreciate the enduring influence of Dante’s work on the modern world,” Brown said.

    Read the full press release below:

    New York, NY (January 15, 2013)— Dan Brown, author of the #1 international blockbusters The Lost Symbol and The Da Vinci Code, recently completed work on a new novel, Inferno, that will be published by Doubleday in the U.S. and Canada on May 14th.  The announcement was made today by Sonny Mehta, Chairman and Editor in Chief of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.  Inferno, featuring the return of renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, is set in Italy and centers on one of history’s most enduring and mysterious literary masterpieces, Dante’s Inferno. The book will have a first printing of four million copies.  It will be published simultaneously in the U.S. and Canada and also be available as a Random House Audio and ebook.

    “Although I studied Dante’s Inferno as a student, it wasn’t until recently, while researching in Florence, that I came to appreciate the enduring influence of Dante’s work on the modern world,” said Brown. “With this new novel, I am excited to take readers on a journey deep into this mysterious realm…a landscape of codes, symbols, and more than a few secret passageways.”

    “Dan Brown is a masterful storyteller” said Mehta, “his ability to fuse codes with well-researched history has helped to make his novels some of the most popular works of all time.  With Inferno, Dan has taken a literary classic and animated it in a way that only he can.”

    Brown’s longtime editor, Jason Kaufman, Vice President and Executive Editor at Doubleday said, “When we turn the first page of a new Dan Brown novel, we step into a world that seamlessly infuses fascinating history, art, symbols and puzzles.  This is Dan’s unique ability.  In Inferno, we have the added excitement of following Robert Langdon back to the heart of Europe, where he becomes entwined in a mystery that has global ramifications…tied to the ominous and truly mesmerizing details of Dante’s masterful work.”

    The Da Vinci Code, published by Doubleday on March 18, 2003, spent 144 weeks on The New York Times Hardcover Fiction bestseller list, 54 of them at #1—the position at which it debuted. The novel has been translated into 51 languages.  The Da Vinci Code is the bestselling adult hardcover of all time with 81 million copies in print worldwide.  It is also one of the top ten most read books in the world along with The Bible, Harry Potter and Gone with the Wind.

    The Lost Symbol was a #1 international bestseller with 30 million copies in print worldwide.  It was translated in into 48 languages.

    Following the publication of The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown’s earlier novels, Digital Fortress, Deception Point and Angels and Demons have all gone on to become multi-million copy international bestsellers.

    Inferno will be published in the U.K. on May 14th by Transworld Publishers, a division of The Random House Group who has published all of Brown’s novels.

    Dan Brown is represented by Heide Lange at Sanford J. Greenburger Associates, Inc.

    Doubleday is an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc. whose parent company is Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGAaA. For more information about Doubleday please visit our website at http://www.doubleday.com. For more information about Dan Brown please visit www.danbrown.com.