Book Review: The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown
The Lost Symbol
Dan Brown
Random House Audio
ISBN 0739319175
Unabridged Audio Book
Read by Paul Michael
There have been countless reviews of this book, including synopses, so I’ll confine myself to my reactions rather than spitting out another synopsis.
Is Dan Brown a great writer? No, but I enjoyed The Da Vinci Code (also read by Paul Michael) from the standpoint of action adventure (I’m also hooked by action adventure movies) and was willing and able to overlook its many literary and fact-based flaws. I just thought it made a really good story and I read it with the intention of putting aside my nitpicking persona so I was pretty well pleased.
The Lost Symbol falls into the same vein but not quite as successfully. Because of his fame, I suspect his publisher was not willing to step on toes and give it the full edit it needed and, as a result, the pace is too slow and the book is too long. It’s not actually much longer than The Da Vinci Code—about 50 pages in print, the same number of CDs in audio—but it seems nearly endless at some points, particularly at the end. I really felt the last CD could have been largely dispensed with because Mr. Brown’s exposition just took much too long and I felt myself zoning out. It was sort of like, “OK, get on with it, I don’t care this much”.
Another thing that bothered me was the use of the word “orientate”. This happened twice so it wasn’t a typo and there’s no excuse for it. The word is “orient” and, if Mr. Brown doesn’t know that, a good copy editor should have caught it. I hate the word to the point where it brought me to a screeching halt both times. (Two other pet peeves are “conversate” instead of the correct “converse” and “irregardless” instead of the proper “regardless” but those don’t appear in this book, thank heavens.)
Above all, the one thing that really didn’t work was near the end when the bad guy is revealed. The victim, who has been physically and psychologically tortured, suffers a final enormous mental and emotional shock, one that would send most of us to counseling, but within just a few minutes, he is actually chuckling and is totally focused on the exposition mentioned above in which he essentially explains everything to Robert Langdon.  I kept expecting to hear that he had pretty much gone off the deep end because of the trauma but, nope, that didn’t happen. Completely unbelievable.
There are some positive notes here, though. The reader, Paul Michael (same as for The Da Vinci Code), is good and I never lost my attention because of him—he made Robert Langdon sound “real”, so to speak. I’ll be looking for more audio books read by him.
The story revolves around Freemasonry and its secretiveness and takes place in locations of Washington, DC, that are intriguing. I want to go see for myself if the things that are highlighted at these locations are real. I’m also very curious as to whether the Freemasonry secrets “revealed” by Mr. Brown are completely made up or whether they have some basis in truth but I suspect I’ll never know since the members of this organization do keep things to themselves. It was refreshing, though, that Mr. Brown did not make Freemasonry an evil entity swirling with conspiracies, a ploy that is much too common.
Finally, there is one episode in which I found myself thinking Robert and Katherine are incredibly stupid but, as it turned out, this was one of those times when the author’s cleverness became evident.  Much of the reading public may turn up their collective noses at Dan Brown’s books but it’s hard to deny that he does tell a good story. At the end of the day, that’s really what I want more than anything.
Recommended with some reservations.
Reviewed by Lelia Taylor, December 2009.
December 26, 2009
Tags: action adventure, audio book, conspiracy, Random House, thriller Posted in: Full Reviews, My Reviews
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2 Responses
To the point and an excellent article.
I too was bothered by “orientate”. This version (incorrect) of the word is used in the UK as a correct version. I went to check and see if Dan Brown was a Brit- nope! Then I checked the reader ( I was listening to an audio book) – Nope! So what’s up?
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