Inferno by Dan BrownMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I was not sure at all, when I started to read Inferno, whether it would hold my attention with its pace and intrigue like the other Dan Brown novels I’d enjoyed so much in the past. However, the unusual beginning gripped me immediately and I wanted to know, just what strange situation had hero, Robert Langdon, landed himself in. He wakes up in an Italian hospital with amnesia. Very soon he and Sienna, a doctor, are involved in a chase from some mysterious agents and so the plot unfolds, with the heart of the story revolving around Dante’s 14th century poem, The Divine Comedy, and the more contemporary problems about population control of human beings on Earth.
The book contains lots of facts about places I’ve never visited, such as Florence and Vienna, which some describe, critically, as ‘information dumping’. Although I probably won’t ever travel there I found the details very educational and was grateful to Dan Brown for providing these snippets of cultural lessons. While it did slow down the pace every so often the fascinating facts and figures, about the art, churches and history etc, came as a bit of relief from the inevitable twists and turns that one has come to expect in a Dan Brown novel. The essence of the tale, for me, had to be about an attempt to cure the Earth of its ‘humankind plague’ before it was too late and pestilence and famine took over. There were some ideas taken from current scientific and medical advances (arguably?), like genetic manipulation and modification that held a modicum of credibility. In many countries the jury may be still out on the subject of genetic engineering and that is not argued in detail here, but does leave the reader considering some of the pros and cons. This was a compelling and intriguing read and one that I will come back to again.
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