The Lost Symbol

Don't read this if you don't want the plot spoiled.........

I loved the Da Vinci Code. Let's start off by saying that. It was exciting. It was set in Europe. It had all kinds of cool buildings as backdrops. I was genuinely surprised at the end.

This book not so much. It's just as fast paced as The Da Vinci Code, but it's set in Washington D.C., not a really cool or exciting city to me. All the little history tidbits were here, but it was more like National Treasure then something new and different.

I don't know if this is obvious to everyone who reads the book, so if this spoils it for you I'm sorry, but I figured out on like page 75 that the bad guy was Solomon's son. I thought it was very thinly vieled. Then throughout the whole book it is foreshadowed that the bad guy has this terrible thing he is going to do that will ruin the country, change lives forever, and then when it finally comes down to the end and he is about to carry out his evil plan all he has is a video of a bunch of politicians participating in a Masonic ritual. I was really let down. That's it? That's what he's got that is so evil? Really? I thought he was going to have nuclear codes or a deadly virus or something really scary, but no, just a video. And then even more disappointing...... the thing that they spend the whole novel searching for........ is a Bible. That's it. A Bible. The book thas has more copies in print than anything else. It's not lost. There is one within arms reach of most people their whole lives. This again was a let down. They obviously didn't even need to dig up the final piece of the puzzle once they figured out it was a Bible.  Of course in this book the bible is the "Ancient Mysteries" and if the Bible is decoded it will reveal all the mysteries on earth.

I didn't buy it.

I will say that I read the whole thing. The bad guy seems like a really cool character. If I was writing the book I wouldn't have killed him off. He was the most well written and interesting guy in the whole book. I would have like to have seen him get away and carry out some other "evil" plan. Dan Brown is able to write in such a way that it doesn't feel like you're reading a book, you actually feel captivated and part of the adventure which I like. Overall a good read with a few disappointments.