Book Review: The Lost Symbol

October 1, 2009

The Lost Symbol, by Dan Brown, starts off a little slow in comparison to his previous novels, but when the pace eventually picks up, it proves well worth the wait. The story is set in Washington DC and manages to stay there; although the characters certainly spend their time running frantically around the city almost as much as Brown’s prior novels have them running about the globe.
Symbologist Robert Langdon, once again the focal character of the novel, sets out to DC at the beginning of the story as a favor to one of his closest friends, Peter Solomon. True to form, Langdon quickly finds himself drawn into a mystery of symbols, in a race to save Peter’s life and possibly avert a national security crisis. Led by clues that range from gruesomely recent to millennia old, Langdon must solve a puzzle laid out by the founding fathers of America.
The characters in The Lost Symbol are richly varied and muli-layered, keeping the reader guessing who’s really on whose side, and what their true motivations are. Some of the most irredeemably unlikable personalities in the story turn out to be working for the greatest good, while ultimately the worst villain of the tale has been blindly motivated by selfishness, closed mindedness, and arrogance. My one big character complaint was Langdon’s stubborn refusal to believe that the legend this mystery is based on might have more truth to it than he can see. While I understand that Brown had to bring the character around slowly to the acceptance of different possibilities, in order to bring the readers along at a pace that would keep them engaged and eventually find them believing, it still seemed out of character for Langdon to be so closed minded to the possibilities of multiple interpretations of data. Also, it might be that I’ve been reading a few too many mysteries of late, but I found a few things in the story predictable, or perhaps just formulaic. I had the identity of the main villain figured out within the first few chapters, and some of the traps he set seemed like they would have been blindingly obvious to characters of the intelligence and experience that Brown has created.
I was however thrilled with the US history lesson! Growing up with grandparents who made their life’s work the study of metaphysics, comparative religion, Mystic Christianity, and what’s now being called Noetic Science (starting back in the 1950’s when such things were still considered witchcraft by most of America), I was familiar with much of the older symbology, literature, and legend employed in the story. However, I had no idea of the extent to which these beliefs were not only held as truth by many of the founders of the US, but also made their way so obviously into the foundation of the country. I’ve long known that very few Americans understand the true intent of what our founding fathers were attempting to create, but it would seem that I too have quite a bit more to learn about it than I realized. It looks like a trip to DC is in my near future!
Authors have tried in the past to put forward some of the same ideas that Brown brings to the table, with varying degrees of success. Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land is a great example, as even heavily edited from the original text, it barely made it to publication in the early 1960’s due to the “outrageous” content. Brown is no stranger to controversial material though, and all in all I think he’s written an eye-opening and engaging novel, with many truths and even more actual mysteries, whose time has finally come. I’d like very much to believe that by now the world is ready for it.
Comics-Online gives this title 4 out of 5 symbols of the Sacred Feminine!
The Lost Symbolby Dan Brown