October 30, 2017
Fans of bestseller Brown’s novels featuring Robert Langdon will probably enjoy the Harvard “symbology” professor’s fifth outing, but those who expect coherence in their thrillers will be disappointed. Langdon, last seen in 2013’s Inferno, visits the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, to hear a lecture by Edmond Kirsch, a former student of his who’s now a “billionaire computer scientist, futurist, inventor, and entrepreneur.” Kirsch promises in the buildup to his lecture to answer the questions, “Where do we come from? Where are we going?” Those answers, the reader is repeatedly told, will shatter the foundations of the world’s religions. When evil doers thwart Kirsch’s efforts to disseminate this great news, Langdon goes on the run, accompanied by Ambra Vidal, the stunningly beautiful director of the Guggenheim Museum, on a mission to find those responsible and to share Kirsch’s discovery with the world. The answers to Kirsch’s fundamental questions come as a letdown. Brown promises much but delivers little. Agent: Heide Lange, Sanford J. Greenburger Associates.
November 1, 2017
Another Brown (Inferno, 2013, etc.) blockbuster, blending arcana, religion, and skulduggery--sound familiar?--with the latest headlines.You just have to know that when the first character you meet in a Brown novel is a debonair tech mogul and the second a bony-fingered old bishop, you'll end up with a clash of ideologies and worldviews. So it is. Edmond Kirsch, once a student of longtime Brown hero Robert Langdon, the Harvard symbologist-turned-action hero, has assembled a massive crowd, virtual and real, in Bilbao to announce he's discovered something that's destined to kill off religion and replace it with science. It would be ungallant to reveal just what the discovery is, but suffice it to say that the religious leaders of the world are in a tizzy about it, whereupon one shadowy Knights of Malta type takes it upon himself to put a bloody end to Kirsch's nascent heresy. Ah, but what if Kirsch had concocted an AI agent so powerful that his own death was just an inconvenience? What if it was time for not just schism, but singularity? Digging into the mystery, Langdon finds a couple of new pals, one of them that computer avatar, and a whole pack of new enemies, who, not content just to keep Kirsch's discovery under wraps, also frown on the thought that a great many people in the modern world, including some extremely prominent Spaniards, find fascism and Falangism passe and think the reigning liberal pope is a pretty good guy. Yes, Franco is still dead, as are Christopher Hitchens, Julian Jaynes, Jacques Derrida, William Blake, and other cultural figures Brown enlists along the way--and that's just the beginning of the body count. The old ham-fisted Brown is here in full glory ("In that instant, Langdon realized that perhaps there was a macabre silver lining to Edmond's horrific murder"; "The vivacious, strong-minded beauty had turned Julian's world upside down")--but, for all his defects as a stylist, it can't be denied that he knows how to spin a yarn, and most satisfyingly.The plot is absurd, of course, but the book is a definitive pleasure. Prepare to be absorbed--and in more ways than one.
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May 1, 2017
What's Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon up to next? With the felicitous mix of art, religion, science, history, and lots of symbols that made The Da Vinci Code such a craze, he's investigating the collision of two of humankind's most pressing questions. Pushed back a bit from the September 26 pub date announced originally; with illustrations, too.
Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
January 22, 2018
The fifth outing for Harvard symbology professor Robert Langdon’s combines Brown’s typical mix of sinister religious fanaticism and old-fashioned adventure tropes, but most of the fun this time comes from the author’s creative ideas for futuristic technology. The best of these is Winston, a beyond-the-cutting-edge artificial intelligence created by Edmond Kirsch, a former student of Langdon’s. After Kirsch is murdered, minutes before disclosing a world-shaking discovery about the origin of life, Winston supplies Langdon with background information, advice, and, when needed, life-saving escape tips. Reader Michael gives Winston a wry British voice (more Hugh Grant than Anthony Hopkins) and a charming attitude that easily qualifies him as the novel’s most entertaining character. When circumstances quiet Winston for much too long, the book turns dull. The rather stiff-sounding Langdon and his companion, Ambra Vidal, the “future queen of Spain,” rush breathlessly from Madrid to Bilbao to Barcelona, trying to uncover Kirsch’s secret discovery while simultaneously avoiding a loony religious hit man and the police, who believe they killed Kirsch. But it’s only when Winston returns, with his all-knowing yet likeable voice, that the energy and vitality of the story once again match the plot’s relentless activity. That’s no fault of actor Michael, who admirably keeps up with Brown’s pace throughout. A Doubleday hardcover.