Dan Brown's much awaited novel released in Singapore last week.And it was selling briskly. In all bookstores "Inferno" is placed at the front. Does the book worthy of the hype? i was bit disappointed by the story. I brought the book "The Divine Comedy" by Dante some months back at a book sale. Many times read the first canto but never went beyond that.Just before reading this book "Inferno" i read different cantos randomly , i was simply amazed by the detailed description of everything. But this book uses the "Inferno" texts here and there to the stories context with some minor changes or addition.
Robert Langdon is back ,this time he has to save the world from a kind of vector virus attack.did he succeed ? thats the oneliner. The story is fast paced ,despite the pace i felt bit slow at the end. Dan Brown's love for Italy and renaissance is again come to the fore in Inferno.But his phantasmagorical characters are not memorable. For Robert Langdon the clue is the below poem :
Kneel within the glided mouseion of holy wisdom,
and place thine ear to the ground,
listening for the sounds of trickling water.
Follow deep into the sunken palace
for here, in the darkness, the chthonic monster waits,
submerged in the bloodred waters..
of the lagoon that reflects no stars..
There are four groups of people in this novel who fight other for most part of the story.First , Robert Langdon , who lost his temporary memory and trying to figure out what is going on around him. second, the World Health Organization(WHO) , who are trying to find a scientist and thirdly "Transhumanist" group and the last 'The Consortium" a powerful organization which do work for powerful men around the world.
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| My Inferno ... chase... |
Inferno is a complex mix of science (genetics/bio chemical) and words/ codes ( text from Inferno by Dante).Like in his previous book Robert Langdon with his trademark things (Mickey mouse watch, Harris tweeds) runs mainly around Italy and latter Istanbul with a gorgeous looking girl Sienna Brooks to find the various clues .The billionaire scientist Betrand Zobrist worried about the problem of over population , he created a virus -a special kind which makes the host infertile, i.e one in three of the host will become infertile, kind of black death and planned to release it on a particular day at particular location mentioned in the above poem. He was a Dante fanatic , he used Dante's Inferno as his main source of information.
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| Florence Cathedral -Il Duomo |
WHO's chief Elizabeth Sinskey persuaded Langdon to help them to find a particular location based on a cryptic glue which is a painting called "Map of Hell" by Botticelli.Langdon agreed and started his search before he was attacked.The Consortium, helps and guards Zobrist from the outside world for a year but everything went awry when Zobrist's safe box was stolen by WHO. The Consortium sent agent Vyantha to recapture the safe box's content and kill Langdon but she failed to do so, and eventually she was killed while trying to capture Langdon. But Consortium erased Langdon's short term memory which made Langdon do redo his search.
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| Hagia Sophia |
The action goes through various historical locations and Dan Brown had given a running commentary of all the those beautiful architectures and artistry.The authors awesome research leaves one spellbound, specially me who like historical thrillers. But this novel has
many inaccuracies which i'm not aware but read in different websites. Somewhere at the end i was not at all interested to read further,in fact boring, somehow i finished the book but not excited as much as Dan Brown's previous works. Through out reading this book, Tom Hanks face came to my mind, i hope one day , someone will make film of this story.
Boboli Gardens - Virtual tour
Florence Baptistery- where Dante was baptized
Hagia Sophia- 360 degree view
*Pictures taken from wikipedia
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