Book Review :
If you’re reading this in an effort to determine whether or not you want to read Origins, I’m going to make two assumptions:
1) You’ve already read the previous books in the series and, as such, need no introduction to Robert Langdon or Dan Brown’s art/history/symbol/puzzle MO; and
2) You’re not looking for sparkling prose (because, if you are, it’s a little bit like going to an all-you-can-eat $5.99 buffet and getting pissed that there’s no caviar and foie gras).
Dan Brown is the Hootie and the Blowfish of thriller writers. A smash hit cultural phenomenon early on (like Darius Rucker and the boys), Brown subsequently suffered an unfairly disproportionate critical backlash from holier-than-thou critics who (perhaps not incorrectly, if a bit unfairly and unnecessarily) savaged his writing style and mocked the formulaic nature of his books (which, yes, are a bit like an episode of Home Improvement: Tim creates a crazy situation, Tim screws up, Tim and Wilson have a backyard heart-to-heart, Wilson says something wise, Tim utterly bollixes up communicating the advice to Jill but succeeds in heeding it to fix what he screwed up, Al’s beard gets made fun of, cue credits (…and it just occurred to me that no one under the age of 35 gets that reference, and, if you do get it, you’re sitting there thinking, “Why did he just reference a show whose popularity was utterly inexplicable when considering the quality of its content?”); because, that’s why).
Were The Da Vinci Code (in Brown’s case) and Cracked Rear View (in Hootie’s case) good enough to warrant their absurd sales and global buzz? Probably not. But, neither were their subsequent offerings so impossibly bad that they deserved the mockery that ensued (Inferno, for example, has some fun puzzles and history, and I stand by Fairweather Johnson — “The Earth Stopped Cold at Dawn” might be Hootie’s finest work).
Look, Hootie and the Blowfish wasn’t the first bar band that broke big, and Dan Brown didn’t invent the historical thriller/mystery/puzzle genre, but they both reinvigorated their respective niches, and significantly expanded the audience receptive to such offerings. A lot of subsequent bands and writers owe these cats a debt of gratitude, as they have been able to make a decent living peddling similar (if often inferior) fare thanks to that receptivity — or, if not a decent living, maybe what I like to call “gumball money” (that is to say, pennies), as in the case of the questionable talent responsible for inflicting The Camelot Shadow (not to mention its prequel The Strange Task Before Me: Being an Excerpt from the Journal of William J. Upton) on the world (of all the things Dan Brown should apologize for, its giving the author of those debacles the idea that he could graft a Brownian approach onto a Victorian setting).
(I am just shameless, no?)
All that said, what about Origins? Well, it’s no Da Vinci Code, I’ll tell you that…
I kid. Well, no, I really don’t — it’s not as compelling, or as ingeniously crafted, a book as Da Vinci or Angels & Demons, largely because, save for one impressive feat of mental prestidigitation involving an ampersand, Langdon’s most awe-inspiring moment of symbolic insight is explaining the hidden symbol in the FedEx logo, which has nothing to do with the book’s central mystery and is, I’m sure, known about by anyone with functional eyes. Instead, Langdon relies on oodles of help from, quite literally, deus ex machina — a state-of-the art AI named Winston, the creation of the man whose murder serves as the book’s inciting incident. That, combined with the book’s focus on modern art, a scene in which Langdon is a fish out of water (or, more accurately, a squiggle out of a square, based on what I know about the composition of modern art), makes for a less engrossing and thrilling ride through intricately crafted (if often implausible) historical puzzles than past outings.
Still, there’s something to be said for the book’s concluding chapters, which ultimately convey an uplifting message of hope and unity. Maybe I’m naïve (or, at least, wish I still could be naïve), but there’s something charmingly square about Langdon (and his creator) that, in an age of divisive rhetoric, intolerance, and unbridled hatred for that which is “other” (regardless of who you are and which side of history you think you’re on) resonates and gives an otherwise average (by Brown standards, at least) tale a favorable gloss.
Next time, though, let’s get back into something Langdon actually knows about, eh?
