The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

I know, I know, everyone in the world is reading The Lost Symbol right now. But I just couldn't help my curiosity. I really liked Angels and Demons, and The Da Vinci Code wasn't bad (definitley didn't live up to the hype though; A&D was way better).

It wasn't bad. I'm kind of thinking about re-reading A&D now, to see if it's as good as I remember, because I was a little critical of The Lost Symbol. The writing was pretty good, but at times felt like The Da Vinci Code all over again. Also, I felt like Dan Brown is just too freaking smart for his own good. There is so much information in this book that it can get a little dense. This definitely isn't light reading by any means. It's hard to be riveted to a novel when half the time you feel like the content is way above your head. Sometimes the random explanations and pieces of historical information, etc. were interesting, other times it felt like Brown was just trying to show off how much he knows about all this stuff, and how much research he has done.

However, if you can wade through the copious amounts of historical context, the plot itself was interesting. For first time Robert Langdon finds himself in the middle of an investigation on US soil, right in the heart of the country, in fact. The entire story takes place in the course of 1 night in Washington, DC. The mythology this time is centered around the Masons and all the stories surrounding their history.

For the most part I did enjoy this novel, and it only took me about 2 weeks to read it, so it's not that hard to read. but you have to have patience with it. I never got to the point where I couldn't put it down, even though I was interested. And, I didn't get really interested unil about 100 pages or so into the novel. But if you like Brown's style then you'll probably enjoy this book.