New Dan Brown novel coming 9/15

[djmont]

The Lost Symbol will (allegedly) have a 5 million copy first printing.

http://www.danbrown.com/the-lost-symbol.html

[12thmonkey]

I enjoyed both Angels & Demons and The DaVinci Code.

I'll read it...(from the library)

[Geofferson]

Looking forward to it. :up:

[Cory02]

This will give me an excuse to reread Angels & Demons and The DaVinci code before this comes out.

[wakwak007]

I'll definitely pick this book up.

[darkside]

I enjoy his books. I'm definitely getting the new one.

[fumanstan]

Awesome, loved his other books. Can't wait :up:

[Kal-El]

Wow. Finally. I wonder if it's still the same book that was teased in the dust cover of DVC, or if it's a completely different one. That was supposed to be titled "The Solomon Key" right?

[Shannon Nutt]

I like Dan Brown as well...looking forward to it.

[Tom Banjo]

Can't wait to hear a synopsis.

[M Riesenbeck]

Add me to the "looking forward to it" group.

[fumanstan]

They've kept this locked up pretty well, haven't day? Haven't heard much of anything about it with the release just a couple days away.

[Quack]

I've loved the books.....hated the movies though.....

Will definitely be checking it out!

[Josh-da-man]

They've kept this locked up pretty well, haven't day? Haven't heard much of anything about it with the release just a couple days away.

Not really.

The plot of the book will involve the murder in Washington DC of an old geezer that looks like it was done by the Freemasons. Robert Langdon will be called in as a consultant, and find himself targeted by the same conspiracy that killed the geezer. During the course of the novel, Langdon will hook up with the geezer's hot European daughter. In the end, he will discover that there wasn't a conspiracy after all, but that it was a secondary character who Langdon thought was a trusted friend who was behind the whole thing.

[movieking]

I am reading Digital Fortress now (or Deception Point, I can never remember which one....regardless, it is one of the non-Robert Langdon books), and the formula is exactly the same as the Langdons. Bring in a non-expert to a dire situation in order to have the expert(s) explain every little thing that is happening in order to be able to communicate it to the readers, instead of writing it in such a way that the readers can figure it out themselves (or trusting that the readers are smart enough to do so).

Anyway, I thought that the Langdon books were fine, so I'll definitely pick this up as well.

[boredsilly]

I really enjoy Brown's books. I've read them all, but really his plots follow the same exact thread book after book. He gives good popcorn books though.

[Cory02]

I'll be picking this up Tuesday. Formulaic, sure, but I loved Angels & Demons and The DaVinci Code. If you can suspend disbelief while you are reading them, they are definitely page-turners.

[Goldberg74]

My copy shipped from Amazon yesterday for a day and date release (and it was about $15 delivered). :up:

[Geofferson]

No advance copies provided for critic review -- a bad sign or simply a measure of keeping it 'locked up'?

[movieking]

For this, I'd say keeping it locked up. This book will be critic proof.

[movieking]

There are a couple of positive reviews out there:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article6833868.ece

An embargo-busting review of the latest Dan Brown blockbuster, which goes on sale tomorrow, suggests that The Lost Symbol could be about to do for Washington what The Da Vinci Code did for Paris and London.

The book sees the return of Brown's Harvard symbiologist Robert Langdon as he dashes around the US Capitol in a 12-hour battle against a tattooed and muscled eunuch. At his side is Dr Katherine Solomon, a Noetic scientist who replaces the cryptographer Sophie Neveu as sidekick and intellectual love interest.

The first review of The Lost Symbol appeared today in The New York Times, entitled "Fasten Your Seat Belts, There's Code to Crack" whch suggests that Dan Brown fans will not be disappointed.

The reviewer, Janet Maslin, says that too many popular authors follow a huge hit with a terrible embarrassment, naming, by way of example, Thomas Harris's Hannibal, follow-up to The Silence of the Lambs.

"Mr Brown hasn’t done that," she said. "Instead, he’s bringing sexy back to a genre that had been left for dead."

If Maslin has indeed jumped the gun with her review - The Bookseller magazine suggested that she had - Brown is unlikely to be complaining too loudly.

It was Maslin's rave review for The Da Vinci Code in 2003 – she compared its appeal to that of the Harry Potter books – which helped send it straight to the top of the bestseller charts. "People called and said, 'Is Janet Maslin your mother, because she never says stuff like that'," Brown later told an interviewer.

That novel, which follows Langdon as the murder of a curator at the Louvre precipitates him into a mystery involving the possibility that Jesus Christ fathered a child with Mary Magdalene, helped Brown break through into the major league. It has since sold more than 80 million copies in 44 languages.

According to the New York Times review, we catch up with Langdon again as he heads for the National Statuary Hall in the Capitol building, where he has been invited to speak by a friend, Peter Solomon, Katherine's brother.

"And here comes Mr Brown’s first neat trick: The Solomon summons was fake. There’s no audience waiting," Maslin writes.

"Just as Langdon realises he has been lured to Washington under a false pretext, a shriek arises from the Rotunda. Some fiend has deposited Peter Solomon’s severed, tattooed hand right above the Capitol Crypt — and right below the dome art that depicts George Washington, founding father and Freemason, as an ascending deity."

Brown's style does come in for some criticism from the critic. Maslin complains that "the author uses so many italics that even brilliant experts wind up sounding like teenage girls" before accepting that "Mr Brown’s excitable, hyperbolic tone is one the guilty pleasures of his books".

"Mr Brown was writing sensational visual scenarios long before his books became movie material. This time he again enlivens his story with amazing imagery," Maslin adds.

"Thanks to him, picture postcards of the capital’s most famous monuments will never be the same."

The Lost Symbol goes on sale tomorrow and has an initial print run in the United States of five million to get publishers Random House over the initial demand. It is also expected to give a major boost to sales of e-readers as users decide to download electronic versions of the novel.

Another early review in The Los Angeles Times could also be put in the "rave" category, although perhaps not quite so breathlessly positive.

"Brown's narrative moves rapidly, except for those clunky moments when people sound like encyclopaedias ("The sacred symbol of the Hebrews is the Jewish star -- the Seal of Solomon – an important symbol to the Masons!")," writes critic Nick Owchar.

"But no one reads Brown for style, right? The reason we read Dan Brown is to see what happens to Langdon... And yet, it's hard to imagine anyone, after reading The Lost Symbol, debating about Freemasonry in Washington, DC, the way people did Brown's radical vision of Jesus and Mary Magdalene in Code. That book hit a deep cultural nerve for obvious reasons; The Lost Symbol is more like the experience on any rollercoaster – thrilling, entertaining and then it's over."

[fumanstan]

Sounds good to me; more of the same is all i'm looking for.

[movieking]

Entertainment Weekly's Review

Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code has spawned a raft of imitators, most of which pale in comparison; the latest, The Lost Symbol, is by Brown himself. Once again, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to the scene of a gruesome attack, joins forces with an attractive and erudite love interest, and speeds around a world capital chasing clues, solving puzzles, and risking his life while dropping cocktail parties’ worth of scholarly minutiae. Even the setting, though new, will be familiar to most readers: Washington, D.C.

This time, Langdon is lured to the Capitol to save his mentor, Peter Solomon, a prominent member of the Freemasons who’s been kidnapped by a cryptic, heavily tattooed, Homer-reading psycho calling himself Mal’akh — a vicious fellow even less plausible than the albino monk in The Da Vinci Code. Our hero is also in possession of an ancient Masonic artifact whose clues lead him on a treasure hunt to various D.C. tourist spots as he searches for a secret long hidden by the brotherhood.

That secret, of course, is one giant MacGuffin — though Brown is the rare thriller writer who seems to lavish as much attention on the object that sets his plot in motion as he does on the action itself. But for thriller fans, it’s the chase that really matters. Especially since the secrets of Freemasonry just aren’t as compelling as, say, a controversial theory about Mary Magdalene and Jesus.

Luckily, Langdon remains a terrific hero, a bookish intellectual who’s cool in a crisis and quick on his feet, like Ken Jennings with a shot of adrenaline. The codes are intriguing, the settings present often-seen locales in a fresh light, and Brown mostly manages to keep the pages turning — except when one of his know-it-all characters decides to brake the action for another superfluous, if occasionally interesting, historical digression. (Did you know there’s a carving of Darth Vader on the National Cathedral?) Even after the book’s climactic showdown, you must slog through another 50-plus pages of exposition that Brown couldn’t cram into the main narrative. Sometimes it seems that authors, like their villains, don’t know when to leave well enough alone. C+

[Geofferson]

Was at the airport at 6am for a business flight today. I walked by two book stands on the way to my gate and noticed that the copies were nearly gone. The airport was probably the earliest way to get a copy of this book since stores are open prior than typical business hours (assuming online stores didn't ship early).

[FantasticVSDoom]

Was able to walk into Borders this morning around 9:30 and pick it up no problem... Not sure how they sold beyond that but I dont think it was much of an issue getting one around here for most of the day. So far I have enjoyed it.

[Quake1028]

Target's front display was pretty picked through.

[12thmonkey]

Just received an email confirmation that my library is holding a copy for me.
wOOt! :banana:

[fumanstan]

I'm enjoying this about 100+ pages in; while it's generally more of the same Dan Brown stuff, the setting is interesting as are the history behind DC and the Masons.

[Drav3n]

I'm enjoying this about 100+ pages in; while it's generally more of the same Dan Brown stuff, the setting is interesting as are the history behind DC and the Masons.

im about 200 pages in and gotta agree w/ u. His books are well written and detailed but the 'robert langdon series' all feel the same.

[fumanstan]

im about 200 pages in and gotta agree w/ u. His books are well written and detailed but the 'robert langdon series' all feel the same.

Yeah, I also find that i'm a lot more annoyed with the whole aspect of withholding information from the reader for the purpose of a big reveal a few chapters later now then I was before. I think i'm also spoiled by the Illustrated Editions of Angels & Demons and Da Vinci Code, as I find myself stopping to Google some of the locations that he comes across to see what they look like.

[movieking]

I am having a hard time in getting interested in this book. I am about 100 pages or so in, and it just seems like it is more of a chore to read than anything else. I'll definitely continue on to finish it since I want to see how it ends before I read any spoilers, but I gotta say at this point, it's pretty disappointing (plus it is basically the same as the other Langdon books, as noted before).

[Drav3n]

Well, Im done w/ the book. This time the "twist" was kinda obvious (to me atleast it was). As detailed as the story was, it couldnt keep me as interested as I thought. I felt like it was a homework assignment to get it finished.

I think im just gonna return the book and get my money back..this isnt a book i feel worthy of having in my collection haha

[movieking]

Finished it as well, and was very underwhelmed. Actually, I disliked the book, and that doesn't happen frequently. As for the twist, if you didn't see it as soon as the groundwork was laid for it, I don't think that you were reading it close enough. This was the worst Robert Langdon book by far.

[Drav3n]

^ ^ completely agreed.

[Ginwen]

I didn't hate it but it was a bit of a slog to get through (especially the last bit), and the big surprise was really obvious and not surprising at all.

[LeeVing]

I read this book a few years ago when it was called "The DaVinci Code".


That was the first Dan Brown i read, and then read "angels and demons" before that movie came out.


But this one is really the same as both those books...female tag-a-long, naked evil person.


This book also seemed a bit dumbed down for the new fans that will be buying his book at Wal-Mart.

[fumanstan]

I finished this last night and still thought it was enjoyable. More of the same, but that's pretty much all I was looking for. Unfortunately the Masons just weren't as interesting a topic as the Illuminati or the Holy Grail, which made Langdon's journey a little less interesting to me, especially since there was less running around uncovering pieces of history at various locations.

I didn't see the twist coming, so maybe I was just oblivious. After the climax was kind of a bore though and just rehashed the same discussions made earlier in the book. Also, one of the reviews compared a character to Jar Jar Binks, which I didn't really see at all.

[Tommy Ceez]

OHHHHHHHHHHH

Is it another book where the hero runs away from people chasing him while solving puzzles?

:lol:

[fumanstan]

OHHHHHHHHHHH

Is it another book where the hero runs away from people chasing him while solving puzzles?

:lol:

Are you new to Dan Brown? :lol:

[12thmonkey]

Just finished The Lost Symbol, and I enjoyed the journey, just not the destination. Unlike a lot of Brown-haters, I don't have any beefs with his style of writing or his characters, and as escapism it fits the bill neatly. It's not highbrow, but it's fun stuff.

The clues and locale were fine - as was the whole Freemason theme - but I found the final reveal a letdown, and two of the other big reveals seemed telegraphed rather loudly.

[ctyankee]

Just finished The Lost Symbol, and I enjoyed the journey, just not the destination. Unlike a lot of Brown-haters, I don't have any beefs with his style of writing or his characters, and as escapism it fits the bill neatly. It's not highbrow, but it's fun stuff.


I agree. After all, there are only so many ways an action/suspense/mystery book can go. So, after you've read a certain number of books, the only thing that CAN be done is to tell an interesting story. Brown slant on that is the 'hidden clues among us' angle where he finds interesting and (often) plausible tidbits and then builds a story around them. The problem with the Lost Symbol is that the 'secrets' aren't really interesting.

I'm guessing something went wrong with his clues. Either he built the framework on something that was already in another book or fact checking ruined an idea. Again, just a guess but I find it hard to believe that he went down the C.I.A. route of hidden symbols just for a post-mortem. Nor do I think that he thought that there was enough excitement the secrets he did have to build a book around. Not even close.

I really didn't see the big reveal coming. Perhaps it's just me but the idea that someone listens in on the warden in a third world prison is so weak, it is sickening to even mention. Just awful. The other gag-gable thing was Miss CIA genius sending Langdon and the sister off with one dude on the pretense of making sure that the brother isn't questioned by the police - which could be taking place as they speak. Ever hear of a thing called a telephone? I mean I know they need to advance the plot but I shouldn't have to fight the hurl reflex as I read it.

The other thing was the mysterious word of enlightenment. You know it can't go anywhere as you're reading along but at least you can see or comprehend the treasure or see a hint of its power (a la Raiders of the Lost Ark). Here we know it can't go anywhere, don't see the treasure and see no hint of its power (other than what was revealed early with the sister's accomplishments). What did we get? The bible might have veiled or secret meanings. And if they are discovered, it still won't matter a hoot. What a letdown/bust.

[DaveNinja]

i thought it was okay. i think i liked angels and demons the best out of the 3, though.

[boredsilly]

I'm about a third of the way through, and I do agree that the Langdon formula is a little tired. I thought the mason stuff would be really interesting in Brown's hands, but so far I think I actually like what National Treasure did better. I LOVED Angels and Demons and Da Vinci, but those both felt more intricate than this does.

I have to say, I seriously would pay for an audiobook version of Robert Langdon classes. Some of the most interesting things in these books are the flashbacks to when Langdon is teaching. I wouldn't mind Brown writing little short lessons about topics he was interested in that wouldn't work in a story. But I'm sure that's just me.

I will finish it, because it's ok, just not worthy of it's print run.

[The Bus]

This book also seemed a bit dumbed down for the new fans that will be buying his book at Wal-Mart.

How can something be more dumbed down than The Da Vinci Code?

[Anubis2005X]

Some of the most interesting things in these books are the flashbacks to when Langdon is teaching.

Except for the fact that no college students talk/act like that. Every time he has one of those lecture sections I just roll my eyes.

[FuQ]

I'm pretty sure I've read this before. I can almost see the actors they will cast in the shitty Ron Howard movie coming our way.

[drmoze]

Total Brownian deja vu. And the twists were even more predictable than his earlier books. The puzzles were pretty weak, and the "big secret" was totally lame. Not impressed at all. Glad I didn't buy this rag.

[boredsilly]

Except for the fact that no college students talk/act like that. Every time he has one of those lecture sections I just roll my eyes.

Well sure they don't, but that doesn't stop those scenes from being entertaining for me. It sort of like the scenes in Indiana Jones movies, where Indiana is in full Dr. Jones mode, working on a chalk board. I love that stuff. I don't care about the realism.

[Anubis2005X]

Well sure they don't, but that doesn't stop those scenes from being entertaining for me. It sort of like the scenes in Indiana Jones movies, where Indiana is in full Dr. Jones mode, working on a chalk board. I love that stuff. I don't care about the realism.

Except Dr. Jones's students don't "erupt in bewildered and thunderous applause" or make any number of unbelievably idiotic comments. The cheese was just too much for me. And did anyone notice that Brown used the verb "chuckle" like a thousand times? Every freakin' person was chuckling in this book. Glad I sold it quick...

[djmont]

Yeah, but one of Dr. Jones' students <I>did</I> write a mash note on her eyelids.

[marty888]

Just finished this .... it's like an enjoyable amusement park ride, so I wasn't surprised when I got off and found I was right where I started out.

[xfilekr]

Enjoyed his other 4 novels a lot more than this one. just didn't have the excitement of the others. And most of the characters were annoying while the puzzles weren't special. Disappointment. Ending was pretty good compared to the rest. Curious to see how Ron Howard does a movie...

[movieking]

I've yet to read Digital Fortress, but I thought that Deception Point was by far his weakest work. This was no doubt the worst Langdon novel, but I still thought that it was much better than Deception Point.