Books: The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

Now that I have finished The Lost Symbol, the book is going to get lost at the bottom of my closet. As bad as that joke was, the book was worse. Really disappointed in Dan Brown. He wrote Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons. Da Vinci Code was great and took the world by storm. This book drags on and on. Brown tries too hard to be suspenseful and leaves the reader in the dark on every issue. His style of writing is frustrating. The chapters are extremely short, 2-3 pages on average. Brown jumps between 4 or 5 different characters and plot lines in the book. So, as soon as you get involved and start intuitively predicting and questioning the motivations of a character, the chapter ends and the plot completely changes to a new character. He also tries to end the chapters with mysterious questions and phrases. Pretty annoying and I am getting frustrated revisiting the book. There are many story lines and questions posed in the novel that are left unanswered. He attempted to answer some of them in his generic, simple conclusion and fell far short of my expectations. There was only one "wow" moment in the entire book. To his credit, it was a hell of an "ah ha!" Besides that brief revelation I came very close to putting the book down on numerous occasions. And in hindsight that one moment was not worth the 500 + pages. The only reason I kept reading was because of the historical context and I was hoping that the conclusion would reveal something interesting and enlightening. Without giving it away the ending was the adult equivalent of a generic moral to a children's fable. I give it 1 out of 5 red hunting hats. And if my post wasn't bitter enough already, Papelbon just gave up two home runs to lose the game in the bottom of the 9th.