Inferno

On the whole, I'm a fan of Dan Brown's books, but I think his early works are the best. This book 'Inferno' follows his usual writing style, format, and layout. His stories are always well-written and clearly, a lot of research goes into them. This book certainly raises some complex and difficult issues around mankind's growing population and the earth's limited resources, and all of this get's entwined in religion, symbols, Italian history, and the works of Dante.I have to agree with some other reviewers, at over 600 pages long this book could so easily have been 400 pages if Dan Brown was to simply stick to the story instead of going off on a history lesson every other page, which, whilst interesting, starts to become annoying and distracting after 350 pages, leading you away from what is actually happening in the story he's trying to tell. I found myself skipping through paragraphs in an attempt to get back on track with the actual story.

Great plot premise. Beautiful descriptions of a city I dearly love and a fascinating meander through the art and history of the Renaissance. Sadly, mixing these elements together in a novel didn't seem to work. Robert's cartoon-like escapades around Florence quickly became tedious. The double-crossing, two-faced and morally dubious nature of Dan Brown characters is too predictable. ****Spoiler alert*** I didn't mind the 'less than Hollywood' outcome and it stopped the book becoming an all out predictable stinker, but the last couple of chapters focused on the wrong things and were an anti-climax. I would have liked to come back a year later in an epilogue to see the real life challenges faced by the WHO in the aftermath. If you like Dan Brown books, you'll probably find this one a bit meh. If Dan Brown is new to you, you'll probably be a bit confused by the random travelogue and history lessons dotted throughout and ultimately feel disappointed by the morally ambiguous ending.

Having read all of Dan Brown's books I knew what to expect when reading inferno. There's clearly going be a crisis, adventure, danger, European locations steeped in symbology and a ton of art work crafted by masters.This book had all of Dan Brown's best qualities and throughout 95% of the book I was constantly asking myself where the hell the storyline was taking me.I do have one or two very slight disappointments with the book. I love hearing about all the art, the history and the Italian or Latin phrases, but my main disappointment was that this book was the first where I felt there were too many descriptions bogging the storyline down.It's too common for people to compare Browns books to The Da Vinci Code, but in my opinion Angels and Demons was his most spectacular work. Having said that, it's completely unfair to compare one book to the other and I implore people to read with their minds open and without comparisons being at the forefront of your mind.

From the opening chapter when Langdon wakes up in hospital with a head injury and haunted by visions I was hooked. All the expected questions were popping in my head: what happened, where is he, who's after him - you know, that kind of thing. And the pace doesn't slow from there.Set in Florence, Venice and Istanbul we're taken on a rollercoaster journey as Langdon attempts to solve the mystery and the clues in a race against time before a catastrophic plague is released into the world. Sound familiar, course it does! This book follows the same suit/format/template of the other Langdon novels; Angels and Demons, The Da Vinci Code and The Lost Symbol even in the ending of each chapter on a cliff-hanger of sorts. Basically different city/villain/lead female but in the same style. But you know what, why change a format that works and sells millions of books. I love it. The tension, the excitement, the red herrings, the double crossing, the will they won't they, deciding who you trust, the descriptiveness of the city's architecture and the fact that I might actually learn something.The book is littered with Italian phrases, some are translated, others you understand because of the answers. I like this, makes it feel more authentic. And the beautiful descriptions of Florence and Venice's architecure and art just make me want to jump on a plane now.The subject matter itself is quite a provocative topic - world overpopulation. "Here the throng of tourists was almost impenetrable, creating a claustrophobic crush..."In some respects I can kind of see where Zobrist is coming from, the figures and facts speak for themselves but his method is obviously way off. Brown does like to stress his point and you will find a lot of repetition in this book (hence 4/5 not 5!)So overall, you have to like mysteries, you need to like history and problem solving and although part of the Professor Robert Langdon series, this being number 4, this can easily be read as a standalone and is crying out to be made into movie as per the others.Is is factually correct, is it historically correct, is it accurate? I don't know and I didn't care. I got totally swept along, believed every word and as I'm not a history or classics graduate then I didn't need to pick it to pieces. It's just a bloody good story.

Firstly, this is a page turner - good for sat by a pool on holiday as you can churn through it. There is nothing challenging or particularly surprising about it, but it does keep your interest.However, it is ruined in a few ways - firstly, there are sooooo many references to streets, churches, objects, paintings etc which comes across like a poorly written Wikipedia entry. It feels a lot like someone just learnt some boring facts and insists on telling you them, a bit like looking through someone's dull holiday photos. I didnt feel they added anything, if anything they were a tedious distraction. Secondly (partial spoiler) the whole plot is pointless- there is literally no purpose to the book as the outcome is the same whether Robert Langdon got out of bed in the morning or not.