Review: INFERNO

I am the Shade.Through the dolent city, I flee.Through the eternal woe, I take flight.

When a novel starts with such a prose, one can expect it to be spectacular. And Dan Brown doesn't disappoint.
As in the previous Dan Brown novels, Harvard professor Robert Langdon, a symbologist, is in the middle of a crisis that only his knowledge can resolve. A mysterious woman emerges with skills of her own, and everything happens within 24 hours, with bodies piling up because the villain's worldview requires some sacrifices. Seemingly having an impossible reach to everyone and everything, a shadowy organization looms spectrally over Langdon’s head.
 But there are twists, quite good ones I might add. Firstly there is Langdon’s temporary Amnesia which leads to many chapters being flashbacks. This was a very effective move by Brown as it prevents the readers from second guessing the ending, which makes the climax all the more worthwhile.
Dan Brown is a master of connecting our world to the ancient world and he doesn’t disappoint the reader. "Inferno" travels through the secret hideaways of museums, cathedrals and monuments in Florence, Venice and Istanbul, with the usual dazzling array of art. I spent an inordinate amount of time online looking up the artworks of the Renaissance Masters Botticelli, Giorgio Vasari and Michael Angelo. But "Inferno" also includes an adventure ride through a literary text - Dante's description of hell.

Set against an extraordinary landscape inspired by one of literature’s true classics, the book is completed by a genius fanatic who is a leader of one of the foremost international cultural and intellectual movements, Transhumanism.
The first Langdon novel (Angels and Demons) dealt with the Vatican, the Illuminati and antimatter. The second (The Da Vinci Code) dealt with a truth hidden to protect the very foundations of Christianity. The third (The Lost Symbol) treated the U.S government as a faction of Free Masons who practiced rituals dating to the 15th century. Inferno deals with one of the most dangerous problems our world is facing right now and how a fanatic tries to deal with it.

It is a must read for Dan Brown loyalists and skeptics alike. I guarantee you cannot keep the book down till you have finished it.

Ravi Kiran