The Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown

 

"Death is not the end. There's more work to do, but science continues to discover evidence that there is indeed something beyond all this. That message is one we should be shouting from the mountaintops, Robert! It's the secret of all secrets. Just imagine the impact it will have on the future of the human race."    

        -Katherine, from the novel

I was very excited to find Dan Brown's newest novel at my small local library when it looked like I might wait months for the public library to have one available. What I didn't pay attention to was the length---671 pages! I don't really like tackling more than 450. I thought I might never finish but then it became a page-turner, and I was racing toward the end.

This was another thriller featuring Robert Langdon, a renowned symbologist. Here he travels to Prague accompanying Dr. Katherine Solomon, a noetic scientist who has been invited to give a lecture about her trailblazing work on human consciousness. The two long-time friends have become lovers so when Katherine disappears and her completed book manuscript is stolen from the publisher, he sets out to find her. In the process he finds plenty of trouble!

I am rating this novel a 4. Descriptions of landmarks in Prague made me wish I could visit. The story was compelling, the writing was excellent but the subject matter was more than a little beyond my comprehension. Examples of what I've called psycho-jargon: deep spectrum panoramic displays, fractals, neural plasticity, anterograde amnesia, eidetic memory, photolithograph, nano electric biofilament, dissociative identity disorder and numerous others. All of these relate to Solomon's work: noetics, defined as "of or relating to the mind."

Add into this intellectual stuff a mysterious "monster" and some nefarious experimentation by foreign powers and you definitely have another gripping novel by Brown. I can't say much more without revealing secrets.