I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned this in a previous post, but a lot of the books I’d been reading over the past year are books I’ve read at least once in the past. Partly because I have so many books and never got around to re-reading them. Partly because some of those books greatly influenced the novel I’m writing now, whether it’s the content or the style in which it’s written. Specifically, I’ve been revisiting books with a similar writing style and told from a third person point of view. One of those books was Inferno by Dan Brown.
If you’re an avid reader, then you know that Dan Brown is the author of one of the bestselling novels of all time, The Da Vinci Code. Though he had already written one book featuring his main character, Robert Langdon, it wasn’t until the sudden surge in popularity of The Da Vinci Code that skyrocketed Dan Brown into a household name. And over the years, he has written 3 more Langdon novels, with his sixth one releasing next month. However, none of the books following The Da Vinci Code have ever been able to recapture that same level of popularity.
So why am I devoting an entire post to a novel that released 12 years ago by an author most people find bland, boring, and predictable? There are several reasons.
Let’s talk about the actual book itself for a second. It follows the same formula all Robert Langdon novels do: our hero is thrust into a ridiculous scenario that only a professor of symbology can solve; then he and “generic female character” team up to solve puzzles dealing with art history to catch the bad guy; and finally, a few twists and turns where the truth is ultimately revealed and our hero saves the day. Inferno is no different. Robert Langdon wakes up in a hospital in Florence, Italy with a head injury and no recollection of the past 48 hours. He teams up with Dr. Sienna Brooks and spends the entire day chasing clue after clue that seemingly brings them closer and closer to a man-made plague in order to prevent it from being released into the world. Only Robert Langdon and his extensive knowledge of Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy can save us now!
Anyways, that’s basically the plot of the book. And all 500-something pages take place over the course of one day. I can’t remember if the previous Langdon novels took place in one day or if it was several days, so I can’t say for sure if that’s another trope Brown likes to use in his novels. Not that I think that’s a bad thing. If done correctly, then you’ve got yourself a high octane thriller that should grab an audience’s attention. It especially worked for this novel, though the plot was interrupted a lot by Brown’s constant sidebars to give the reader a brief history lesson. For the most part, it worked, but then it became too much. The point is, all of Brown’s novels are thrillers with a history lesson. And generally, there’s nothing wrong with that.
I’ll go ahead and use this opportunity to warn about spoilers.
I have read all of Dan Brown’s books about Robert Langdon except for Origin, which is the novel after Inferno. But from what I’ve read of his novels so far, I think Inferno might be the best one in the series. When you first start the book, you pretty much hit the ground running and there isn’t a lot of down time for the characters to interact with each other on a personal level. There isn’t really a clearly defined villain in this story, either. The man who created the plague killed himself before the novel began, and Robert Langdon is basically racing against the clock to find the plague before it’s released. Overpopulation is a key theme in this novel and the plague created was meant to bring balance back to nature. This being a Dan Brown novel, you would expect for Langdon to save the day. But he doesn’t. The plague was already released a week ago and is already airborne.
However, it’s not a deadly virus aimed at killing the population. The virus basically rewrites your DNA and has a chance to render the host sterile, causing a third of the world’s population unable to conceive a child. It’s quite a remarkable ending, especially when you’re used to the main character always saving the day in the end. Dan Brown definitely surprised me, which, I didn’t think was possible. The point is, the author took a risk on an ending like this because something like that would have major ramifications for the people of the Earth. And I applaud Brown for tackling an issue that is definitely a real concern for future generations.
At the end of the day, I read this novel again for 3 reasons. One, I knew that it was told from a third person perspective and from multiple characters, which is exactly the way my book is written. Two, there’s a lot of action throughout the novel and even though my book doesn’t have quite as many action sequences as Brown’s, it’s still a great example of how to write them. And finally three, the last couple of books I read were a bit more depressing or sad and I needed something fun and entertaining.
And that’s what makes Dan Brown so much fun to read. He may not be the greatest writer in the world and his characters sometimes fall a little flat, but his books are entertaining. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Don’t get me wrong, I love reading a good book with beautiful prose and a beautiful story told between interesting characters. Books, movies, video games, and really any form of entertainment is another way to escape. That’s what I love about books and other entertainment mediums. The world is shitty enough as it is, so I enjoy escaping to a reality that isn’t my own. Dan Brown does a good job of writing escapism fiction. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be entertained.
Dan Brown gets a lot of flak for presenting “facts” about history being inaccurate in his novels. I don’t think that would necessarily be a bad thing if he had just mentioned at the beginning of the book that these facts may be true in the world of the novel, but not necessarily in the real world. I created several fictional places within the city of Chicago and created several fictional scenarios that are historically inaccurate, but I plan on making a statement about that. This is a fictional version of Chicago and I think you restrict yourself trying to be as accurate as possible for every location in a city that exists in real life. And whether or not the statement presented is historically accurate, it’s still fun to think about other possibilities.
I’m not writing this post to convince you to read Dan Brown. I’m writing this so that maybe we can think about it from a different perspective when it comes to his novels. I do think most people know if they’re reading a Dan Brown novel, they aren’t doing it to be emotionally moved, they’re just reading for entertainment. He’s been described as writing travel porn because most of the novels take place in some beautiful country in Europe. After re-reading this book, I realized our styles are very similar, but not completely. My novel also takes place over the course of several months so it’s much slower paced than his novels.
He’s got a new book releasing in September, though I haven’t read the follow-up to Inferno yet. I’ve also heard it might be the worst one. Then again, I always take the internet’s opinions with a grain of salt. And I’m not here to convince you to read more Dan Brown, but to keep an open mind. If something looks fun or entertaining to you, then go experience it regardless of what others say. And if you didn’t enjoy it after all, at least you decided to find out for yourself instead of just following what’s popular.
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