Some of the information is used for unravelling the clues that Langdon and his friend Sienna stumble upon. There is discussion of art, architecture, sculpture and history. The action moves across exotic locales – Florence, Venice, Istanbul. The law enforcement authorities and some unknown people chase him across cities and countries. There is a beautiful, strong heroine who helps him. In the first chapter we find Robert Langdon waking up in an unknown place without being aware how he got there. The rest of the book explains why that happened. There is an unexpected event which happens in the prologue. ‘Inferno’ has all the elements of a vintage Dan Brown novel. So, I was looking forward to finding out whether ‘Inferno’ did that too – entertain me well. Because for me, though they were all different in some ways, what they were trying to do was the same – entertain the reader.
#INFERNO DAN BROWN REVIEW SERIES#
I have been puzzled by this – on why readers of serious fiction regarded the Harry Potter series with affection while they treated the Twilight series and Dan Brown’s novels with contempt, albeit after enjoying them. I don’t read books like that’ became a fashion statement among some of these readers. But readers of serious fiction who read ‘The Da Vinci Code’ and enjoyed it, talked about it with contempt. Dan Brown’s books also spawned off a lot of imitations and inspirations – suddenly there was an upsurge of books which were based on paintings and artwork and the mysteries behind them.
It cannot be denied though that the popularity of Meyer’s Twilight series spawned off the whole vampire genre in YA literature, a genre which now includes werewolves and zombies and other characters of the night. Critics (and sometimes even the original readers and fans) say that Meyer’s and Brown’s prose styles are simple and workmanlike and after the initial success and euphoria readers and critics feel that there is nothing special about their books and their plots. For some reason, while Rowling’s Harry Potter series is still regarded with affection and respect by its original readers and new ones, Stephenie Meyer and Dan Brown seemed to have slipped down that ladder. When a new book by any of these writers came out, no one knew what the stories were about, advance review copies were not available, the warehouses where copies of the book were kept were zealously guarded, the book got released internationally on the same date and the first editions got sold out. Three of them were J.K.Rowling, Stephenie Meyer and Dan Brown. Across the years some writers who wrote popular fiction have become superstars. Now, I did that for the new Dan Brown book – ‘Inferno’. I did that for Dan Brown’s ‘The Lost Symbol’. I did that for the Harry Potter series – parts five to seven. I occasionally make an exception to this. I normally don’t get a book on the day it is released.