New Dan Brown novel coming 9/15
04-20-09, 11:59 AM
#1
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New Dan Brown novel coming 9/15
The Lost Symbol will (allegedly) have a 5 million copy first printing.
http://www.danbrown.com/the-lost-symbol.html
http://www.danbrown.com/the-lost-symbol.html
04-21-09, 10:25 AM
#8
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Re: New Dan Brown novel coming 9/15
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?
09-12-09, 05:41 PM
#12
DVD Talk Godfather
Re: New Dan Brown novel coming 9/15
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.
09-12-09, 07:18 PM
#14
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Re: New Dan Brown novel coming 9/15
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.
09-12-09, 08:20 PM
#15
DVD Talk Legend
Re: New Dan Brown novel coming 9/15
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.
Anyway, I thought that the Langdon books were fine, so I'll definitely pick this up as well.
09-13-09, 07:54 AM
#16
DVD Talk Limited Edition
Re: New Dan Brown novel coming 9/15
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.
09-13-09, 08:50 PM
#17
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Re: New Dan Brown novel coming 9/15
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.
09-14-09, 09:38 AM
#21
DVD Talk Legend
Re: New Dan Brown novel coming 9/15
There are a couple of positive reviews out there:
http://entertainment.timesonline.co....cle6833868.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.
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."
http://entertainment.timesonline.co....cle6833868.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.
Spoiler:
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."
09-15-09, 03:09 PM
#23
DVD Talk Legend
Re: New Dan Brown novel coming 9/15
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.
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+
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.
Spoiler:
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+
09-15-09, 03:42 PM
#24
Moderator
Re: New Dan Brown novel coming 9/15
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).
09-15-09, 05:52 PM
#25
DVD Talk Legend
Re: New Dan Brown novel coming 9/15
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.