Book Review: Origin by Dan Brown

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.