Origin by Dan
Brown has received mixed reviews by readers from all across the world. Some
liked the concept while others reported it was so uncharacteristic work that it
didn’t even make sense.
The same, old
plot structure: prof. as a fugitive along with an attractive woman, a prominent
personality gets murdered leaving an enigmatic secret. Only here, the chase is
shockingly boring, the locations simply an opportunity for Brown to drone on
and on about architectural factoids that do no interest, and the twists that
make Dan Brown's books special?
Robert Langdon
is at the Guggenheim museum, Spain to witness a presentation to be made by his
eccentric ex-student, Edmond Kirsch who claims that his discovery will challenge
the basics of human existence. But during the presentation he is murdered in
view of more than a million viewers and the discovery is stopped from being
revealed.
It is now up
to Robert Langdon and Ambra Vidal, the museum director who is also engaged to
Prince Julian, to find the password which will unlock the presentation so that
it can be showed to the world. The search takes them through historic buildings
with codes and poems with clues to the password.
Characters
seem to be wallowing around helplessly in a chaos much like their creator.
Langdon has precious little opportunity to do what we expect of him, which is
to apply his prodigious intellect and academic knowledge to the problem at
hand. Instead, he is simply carried along with the circumstances at hand and
never once controls the situation. Unlike the intelligent female counterparts
of previous Brown books, Ambra Vidal seems to be here merely for decoration and
to provide the mandatory female representation. In fact, it is the
synthetically intelligent computer Winston who takes center stage throughout,
efficiently overshadowing the human elements.
Symbolism does
play a part but Origin let go of traditional riddles and conventional code
breaking to speak about a mystery that’s focused on the entire human race - its
origin, past, and present. It’s Dan Brown’s most pertinent effort to stray away
from his core roots and still continue to weave a sense of mystery and
suspense. It’s not his best work by any means but it’s a different approach and
it succeeds in more areas than it fails, dealing with a promising proposition
but often lackluster execution.
Where are the
fascinating revelations and intriguing nuggets of The Da Vinci Code? The
extreme mind-boggling and vivid plot turns of Angels and Demons and Deception
Point? Even the maligned Inferno had a superb plot twist to redeem it somehow.
Has Dan Brown gone senile with Origin?
The expose of
the much hyped secret comes so late that you are too bored to care by then. The
actual premise of the final idea is interesting that is religion versus
science, but it isn't very convincing, too many logical inconsistencies to make
it appear feasible.
Origin is
probably Dan Brown’s most boring work, bit nonsensical. High-octane action and
chases throughout the world are replaced with layered tension in enclosed
spaces.
Comments
Post a Comment