Book Review: Origins By Dan Brown
Fiction
Bantam Press $39.95
In another sign of the end of times, Dan Brown continues to write fiction. Fiction that we here at MioStorie feel is a bit “fluffy”. The word fluffy in our terms means that Dan Brown likes to draw on and on about details that are only semi-relevant to the storyline. Informational dumps that the reader has to pour through in order to get to the heart of the story.
The story of Origin revolves around Edmond Kirsch, a computer scientist who is looking for the answer to the biggest question “Where do we come from? Where are we going”. Kirsch has also found the answer and takes it up with religious heads around the world.
“Robert Langdon, Harvard professor of symbology and religious iconology, arrives at the ultramodern Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao to attend a major announcement — the unveiling of a discovery that “will change the face of science forever.”
However, we were as far as Chapter 12 in the book (which is about halfway through the entire thing), and the announcement of this revelation still hadn’t happened. Dan Brown definitely knows how to drag out a climatic story line.
And when they finally do make the presentation live to the world, the revelation was kind of a disappointment for me. After all that time and investment in the book, I felt somewhat deceived when I finally got to know the discovery was. To be very honest, it was less than average.
Additionally, the absence of interpreting symbology in Origin and the rush of reading the outcomes that those symbols on the storyline was missed. Some is still there in form of Modern Art explained in the beginning of the book, where Brown goes into painful detail about the exhibits at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao Spain. He talks drones on about the Black Widow spider, the surface on outside of the Guggenheim building, the walkways leading up to the entrance, and the unusual art pieces inside the space for multiple, multiple pages.
The length of the book could have probably been about 50 pages shorter if so much non-pertinent detail was removed from the book. It’s our opinion here at MioStorie after 5 of our staffers and contributors read Origin that it was way too long given the discovery and climax of the book was so ordinary and average.
We missed the usual Dan Brown story with a true villain and where Professor Langdon and a beautiful female figured out the trail that a formidable villain left behind. The villains in this story were many and luke warm when it came to the wickedness they put out there.
All things considered, Origin was an average book, a Dan Brown book that disappointed our staff at MioStorie for the first time. If you’re planning to pick it up, don’t expect the same quality and suspense in “The Da Vinci Code” or “Angels and Demons”, this one fell a little flat for us.
