Dan Brown Book Review "The Lost Symbol" 5/10

Have you ever noticed how in movies that have sequels they all have a similar pattern of quality? Generally the first one is decent, but not great. The second one normally gets all the elements right, and improves all of the negatives in the first to create a pretty damn good finished product. The third one generally regresses pretty hardcore and is generally a contrive attempt to profit off the success of the first two. This appears to be the format Dan Brown has followed, and “The Lost Symbol” appears to be a situation where Mr. Brown was obviously trying to hit on the success of the first two, and try to emphasize the highlights of those books. What that means is the use of the symbols and secret societies is now in your face instead of subtle and surprising. He has found a formula for success and he is sticking to it. To be quite honest, Dan Brown is not a good writer, actually quite the opposite, he is terrible. That doesn’t mean I don’t think he is entertaining, as I enjoyed his first two books quite a bit, however, he is no wordsmith. He is never going to make a living on his ability with words. His books are interesting despite his lack of writing talent, not because of it. It was his ability to work a plot, winding and interesting that makes his books popular. This one however, was transparent. It was easy to see what was going on from the beginning; there were not good plot twists, and frankly no really good plot period. At the end when it came to big reveal it was a terribly let down. Brown was really pushing to make something important and of something that didn’t make that much sense at all. I was hoping that would be a good read, something that would be interesting. Instead all I got was a contrived mess of predictable plot.