Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol: a book review

Posted on 28 Sep 2009 - by Katkat In: TV Shows/Movies/Books

Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol: a book review

I wasn’t aware that Dan Brown penned another Robert Langdon story after the Da Vinci Code until I saw the title Lost Symbol in my routine mirc ebook check. What?! A sequel to Da Vinci Code?!! I was absolutely thrilled. I loved Angels and Demons and The Da Vinci Code. So this one I presumed would be a great suspense thriller novel too!

The Lost Symbol brings back our beloved symbologist/professor Robert Langdon to another mystery this time it’s at Washington DC. Robert was summoned to Washington DC by his long-time friend Peter Solomon for a lecture. When Robert came to the venue, he was shocked to discover that a madman had his friend hostage and he kept telling him that he needs to search for the treasure of the Ancient Mystery of the Freemason or else he will kill Peter. And to convince Robert, the madman named Malakh dropped off Peter’s hand indicated by his famous Mason ring at the center of Capital Dome. Suddenly the head of CIA got involved and Katherine Solomon’s(Peter’s sister) life too was endangered. Robert didn’t know who to trust: the CIA or the mysterious Bellamy who is a dear friend of Peter and fellow Mason. On top of the conspiracy, he needs to find the treasure of the Ancient Mystery or else Peter will die.

As usual, Dan Brown delivered a well-written suspense/thriller novel in the “Lost Symbol”. The story dragged on the first and second part then it began to pick up a suspenseful excitement on the third part but the ending turned out to be anti-climactic. The thing I didn’t like here was the setting of the story was all inside Washington DC. The first and second book traveled to a lot of countries with deep-seated history. In this book, it focused on Washington DC and American history. Not much excitement there. What truly engaged me was the villain. I have never hated a villain more than I hated Malakh, especially when he killed our hero Robert Langdon. I couldn’t believe what I’ve read! He was just too powerful and so evil and so twisted in mind. I guessed Dan Brown was successful in creating this villain. The clue-hunting was intriguing too – with all those magic squares, boiling temperature, and masonic symbols.

Despite having the same suspense formula and puzzle-solving plot, this book failed to excite me as much as the other two books. As I’ve mentioned the beginning and middle part of the book were a little bit dragging. The building up of story was a little slow. A lot of characters needed to be in place first before the pieces of the puzzle begin to move. So at the third part of the book, I get to discover the why’s and how’s behind the events and the excitement took off from there. I didn’t like the ending. Yes the mystery has been solved, the villain has been vanquished, and the hero has been resurrected however there were lots of post-story notes with regard to the Ancient Mysteries. And it wasn’t very informative but rather propagandistic.

Of the three books I loved Angels and Demons the best. So if I compare this book with the previous 2 books, I would give this a rating of 7 out of 10.

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