The Lost Symbol once again features Dan Brown’s unforgettable protagonist, Robert Langdon. Brown's longtime editor, Jason Kaufman, Vice President and Executive Editor at Doubleday said, "Nothing ever is as it first appears in a Dan Brown novel. This book’s narrative takes place in a twelve-hour period, and from the first page, Dan's readers will feel the thrill of discovery as they follow Robert Langdon through a masterful and unexpected new landscape. The Lost Symbol is full of surprises."
"As Browniacs have long predicted, the chase involves the secrets of Freemasonry and is set in Washington, where some of those secrets are built into the architecture and are thus hidden in plain sight....The new book clicks even if at first it looks dangerously like a clone.... The Lost Symbol manages to take a twisting, turning route through many such aspects of the occult even as it heads for a final secret that is surprising for a strange reason: It’s unsurprising. It also amounts to an affirmation of faith. In the end it is Mr. Brown’s sweet optimism, even more than Langdon's sleuthing and explicating, that may amaze his readers most." - The New York Times, Janet Maslin
"All of this is going to feel very familiar to readers of the previous Langdon books, even though Brown has shifted from foreign places to plant his thriller firmly on American soil.... Brown's narrative moves rapidly, except for those clunky moments when people sound like encyclopedias.... And yet, it's hard to imagine anyone, after reading The Lost Symbol, debating about Freemasonry in Washington, D.C., the way people did Brown's radical vision of Jesus and Mary Magdalene in Code. That book hit a deep cultural nerve for obvious reasons; The Lost Symbol is more like the experience on any roller coaster -- thrilling, entertaining and then it's over." - Los Angeles Times, Nick Owchar
"The plot of The Lost Symbol churns forward with a brutalist energy that makes character but a flesh appendage on its iron machine. It's fun, but you feel a little bruised afterward.... He's set himself a huge challenge. What he did for Christianity in Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code, Brown is now trying to do for America: reclaim its richness, its darkness, its weirdness. It's probably a quixotic effort, but it is nevertheless touchingly valiant. We're not just overweight tourists in T-shirts and fanny packs, he says. Our history is as sick and weird as anybody's! There's signal in the noise, order in the chaos! It just takes a degree from a nonexistent Harvard department to see it." - Time
"The downside of this not being quite the literary train wreck expected is that there is less distraction from the familiar hokum which, precisely because it is so familiar, looks ever-less like ingenious puzzle-spinning and ever-more like a wearisome party trick. Like divorce and civil war, The Da Vinci Code famously divided families. The Lost Symbol might well reunite them. They could all find it simply bland." - The Daily Telegraph (UK)
"Even after the book’s climactic showdown, you must slog through another 50-plus pages of exposition that Brown couldn’t cram into the main narrative. Sometimes it seems that authors, like their villains, don’t know when to leave well enough alone. C+" - Entertainment Weekly
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Rated of 5
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Cloggie Downunder entertaining The Lost Symbol is the 3rd in Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon series. The story goes over 24 hours and starts with Langdon being flown by private jet to Washington to give a lecture as a favour to his long-time friend (and Mason), Peter Solomon. Soon enough, this turns out to be a ruse, and Langdon finds himself at the Capitol’s Rotunda where Solomon’s severed and tattooed hand is left by a mysterious man. Langdon’s expertise as a symbologist is demanded to find and solve legendary Masonic Pyramid. The CIA are involved, and soon the action hots up. This book is (of course, as a Robert Langdon novel) filled with symbols, codes and puzzles, religious icons, lots of technology, chases and escapes, a seemingly invincible villain who is not what he seems, plot twists, apparently impossible resurrections and a virtual travelogue of Washington DC. There are some obvious flaws, and we are asked to believe that some characters will bizarrely put up with lengthy and unnecessary inconvenience. It is fiction, after all. But it is, nonetheless, exciting and fast moving. There are many facts about Washington and Masons and Ancient Mysteries. I couldn’t get the image of Tom Hanks out of my head for Robert Langdon, although he really doesn’t fit this description. I thought the climax was a bit anti-. Entertaining, all the same.
Rated of 5
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chris-metroskunk3000 debbie downer The Lost Symbol was a total let down. I don't agree with any of the previous reader reviews. The first 200 to 300 pages were really great. But then suddenly the second half of the book comes to an absolute halt. What took another 200 pages of material could have been summed up in 50. The writing in the second half also reads as if Brown got bored with the book himself and just began writing anything as fast as he could to finish it. And even worse, the book reads like an apology to the Freemasons for any "misunderstandings" the DaVinci Code may have created about the organizations.
Rated of 5
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Tanmoy Sarkar The Lost Symbol It’s yet another mystery rockers from Dan Brown called “The Lost Symbol” that will make you experience the thrill of Robert Langdon mystery adventure. Full of action, application of wisdom and knowledge, fast paced story telling, all the essentials of a successful murder mystery are here in this collection.
Rated of 5
by
Jeffrey H The Lost Symbol- Summary and Review The Lost Symbol, written by author Dan Brown is quite possibly one of the most pulse-heightening, action-filled, nose-in-book thrillers that I have ever read. Being a fan of Brown, I would have to this is his best work yet, with more to come, I'm sure. This particular book focuses on the secrets and mysteries behind Freemasonry.
There was a concept concealed in the reading that I thought was very interesting. Langdon is told by Solomon that the “secrets of life are hidden in plain sight”, noting that man is a part of God; that through the thoughts of many minds, becomes one, being God. This is a principle that anyone who has faith in a deity would find interesting. The concept that we create God with our thoughts and are actions is quite interesting, and for those devoted to a religious background, it is a principle that should shake their world.
Overall, I felt that The Lost Symbol was a great success. I would highly recommend it to anyone who has the ability and desire to grasp theories of the meaning of life and the afterlife. Very impressive, Dan Brown. B.
Rated of 5
by
eyen amos at it again Dan Brown's latest work is such a unique work; here we see Robert Langdon return. The symbologist we saw in Da Vinci code becomes even more daring, uncovering written enigmas and unearthing long lost truths. It is exhilarating. Indeed Brown is the king daddy of fiction.
Dan Brown is the author of numerous bestselling novels, including
the #1 New York Times bestseller, The Da Vinci Code. He is a graduate of Amherst
College and Phillips Exeter Academy, where he spent time as an English teacher
before turning his efforts fully to writing.
In 1996, Dan’s interest in code-breaking and covert government
agencies led him to write his first novel, Digital Fortress, which quickly
became a #1 national bestselling eBook. Set within the clandestine National
Security Agency, the novel explores the fine line between civilian privacy and
national security. Brown’s follow-up techno-thriller, Deception Point,
centered on similar issues of morality in politics, national security, and
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of 5
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Cloggie Downunder
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Tanmoy Sarkar
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Jeffrey H
