If you haven't read a Dan Brown book yet, DO IT. He's the author of The DaVinci Code, Angels and Demons, and Symbols, among others. His books are fast-paced thrillers with great suspense, unique plot twists, and believable characters. While his books are fiction, he writes so well that you often think you're reading non-fiction and, in the process, become just as scared as the characters in the books are. I actually had some nightmares about the Black Death, overpopulation, airborn viruses, and the plague mask while reading this book over the past 3 weeks.
Inferno is Brown's latest book and it's been a while since I've read one of his books, so I forgot how fun they are to read. They will never win any literary awards of course, but that doesn't mean they're not intriguing or intelligent. This novel reads like a fiction with the pace and thrill of any great suspense writer, but because he uses history, art, geography, and literature that is real, you occasionally forget that it's just a story. This novel is about Harvard University professor of symbology (Is that actually a thing?) Dr. Robert Langdon, a recurring character in many of Brown's books, who awakens in a hospital in Florence not knowing where he is or what has happened in the past 36 hours.
He is quickly the target of an assassin, the World Health Organization, the Italian police, and his own American government who are all trying to kill him, or so he thinks. He is whisked away by Dr. Sienna Brooks, who helps him uncover his past 36 hours. This discovery leads to a complicated and deadly plan that an insane scientist, Dr. Bertrand Zobrist, has created to help rid the world of its overcrowding. Using Dante Alighieri's famous epic poem The Divine Comedy where Dante details the underworld, the devil, and the "inferno", the deepest and most disturbing level of hell, Langdon must decipher clues which bring him through Florence, Venice, and Istanbul, where he and Brooks are trying to stop Zobrist's deadly plague from being released into the world.
While running from location to location to unlock the secrets and avoid capture from the assassins, Langdon quickly learns that he cannot trust anyone around him, that his amnesia has created serious dangers for his life and that of every human being on earth, and that his world has been turned upside down and inside out in a manner of hours.
You will love the thrills, cliff hangers, and shocks that his book has to offer. The 600 pages will zip by and you will be jonesing for more. It's a good book and a fun read!
