Inferno by Dan Brown

"To do nothing is to welcome Dante's hell...cramped and starving, weltering in Sin. And so boldly I have taken action. Some will recoil in horror, but all salvation comes at a price. One day the world will grasp the beauty of my sacrifice. For I am your Salvation. I am the Shade. I am the gateway to the Posthuman age."
                                             -from the novel

Another thriller from Dan Brown with a very intricate plot. In fact, it was challenging to read partly because of all the references to Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy with which I was only vaguely familiar, and partly because of the symbolism and codes so prevalent in Brown's novels. It didn't help that I was reading it while on a cruise and finding only snatches of time to concentrate. At any rate I didn't enjoy it as much as Angels and Demons or The DaVinci Code so I 'll rate it a 4. I have to admit it gave me a yen to travel to Florence, Venice and Istanbul! Also I will recommend it to our co-pastors who are currently preaching a series on the Seven Deadly Sins, which are featured in the plot and are a central part of Dante's great work and the art, particularly of Botticelli, that illustrate it.

In Inferno, Harvard professor of symbology, Robert Langdon, is on another adventure. At the beginning of the story he doesn't even remember how or why. He awakes in a hospital with amnesia and a bullet wound and soon finds out he must run for his life, aided by his doctor, Sienna Brooks. The antagonist/mad scientist/misguided social activist is Bertrand Zobrist. The reader is left predicting who is on which side---that of Robert and Dr. Elizabeth Sinskey of the World Health Organization or Zobrist---through much of the story. The theories about overpopulation presented in the novel are troubling, to say the least. At one point in the novel, the description of Death reminded me of Voldemort in the Harry Potter series.

After reading, I searched out images of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, St. Mark's Basilica in Venice and the Haggia Sophia in Istanbul. So awesome! I only wish I had done that during the reading so I could more fully visualize where the action was taking place.

It will be interesting to see if this novel is adapted to the screen as others by the author have been. I would definitely buy a ticket.