Book review — Dan Brown: Origin

It has been some time since I’ve read The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Daemons by the American author Dan Brown. I read those two thrillers when I was in high school and I remember the writing as thrilling, exciting and also interesting, especially because of many benevolent references to art, culture, and history. I haven’t yet been to Paris, so The Da Vinci Code only incised my interest in travelling to France. Nevertheless, some years have passed, I’ve watched the movie adaptations of Angels and Demons and The Da Vinci Code — I think the movies are good, but not great — compared to the books (I always try to read the book first before I watch the movie adaptation).

Inferno still rests on my stuffed bookshelf (in Slovenian and also in the English language). Although the story attracted me, I somehow didn’t manage to read it. I will … one day.

So let us discuss the newest thriller by Dan Brown the Origin. I surprisingly got the book in our small local library. Usually, all his books are borrowed, this one wasn’t. I took it with me to the seaside to enjoy some popular/trivial/beach/etc. literature. One cannot read only pour excellence novels — sometimes it is necessary to read less quality thinks (as one of my professors for literature at the Faculty of Arts would say).

The plot won’t be spoiled here, the Wikipedia page can fulfill that task. The setting in the Origin is Spain: Bilbao, Barcelona, Madrid. This time the avant-garde art plays the main role, which is a nice change in the series of books. The author does this part convincingly. The main character is prof. Langdon, who isn’t trying to discover a murderer of a friend — no, he knows who the killer was. He is trying to fulfill the last act of his friend’s life — the major scientific discovery is ought to be revealed. The main question of the book is, what this discovery actually is.

There are some spots that left me cold. The story progression is too intense, everything happens in one night. I find that too extreme and not realistic. But ok, what bothered me is the role of the artificial intelligence, which is quite major in this novel. Because of it, the plot seems cheap, because there is actually no secret society involved, even the Spanish king plays no role in the events. There are too many characters in the story, who are just there to support the setting and to distract our super clever professor Langdon. Why create so good setting and then just throw it away, because AI (artificial intelligence) takes it place. Somehow the author tries to predict the future, but still — at the end when the reader realizes, what actually happened, it is too late to avoid disappointment. Maybe it is just me, who wants deeper stories which make sense. This one does not. I hope his next works will be better. I also consider pointless including some LGBTQ characters in the plot when their sexuality doesn’t play any major role — it is just mentioned. Don’t understand me wrong, there should be more LGBTQ characters in books, movies etc., but they should have a function. Nowadays an author puts one of two gays in the story so it feels more modern, but those characters should be main characters, not just some unimportant characters, whose main characteristic is their sexual orientation. To sum up, I think you can leave this book out.