Another Dan Brown classic! Robert Langdon is back in this book with another winding tale of symbology, secret passageways and allegorical puzzle. Once I started reading it I could not put it back down. I started reading the last 150 pages last night and after 3 hours found myself at the 98th chapter. The story is so immersive and mind boggling one wants to know what, why, who, when…all the time.

Inferno spans 3 most architectural cities of the world, starting from the artist’s haven i.e. Paris, sprinting into the beautiful waters and gigantic St. Mark’s Square of Venice and finally flying to its end straight into the East’s Heart i.e. Istanbul. As always, Dan Brown was very intimate and detailed about the architectural beauty of each historical building that Professor Landgon set foot in.

The most defining part of the whole story-line is that the plot spans a total of 2 days and 2 night only. 48 hours of Robert Langdon and a dramatic unraveling of Dante’s seven levels of hell. This is what makes it so empowering and fills your imagination with hundreds of minute thoughts, codes, architectural details. So much so that one can forget the subtle hints of the dark and twisty ending. But being a serial movie watcher that I am, I did guess some part of it by the beginning of the end (how boastful of me).

Nevertheless, the ending is kind of a boggling turn of events. I do not want to provide any spoilers so lets just say that the book’s ending is nothing like what you think it is. Its exactly the opposite. Still it needs to be said here that, although the story itself was riveting, the curtain dropping moment was not as imaginative and thrilling as I would have liked it to be. And as Inferno readers have come to known Dan Brown by. Still, its definitely, worth the read. Also, if you are a Dan Brown follower like me, you would read anything he offers like the Scripture.

I would highly recommend this book to detective and mystery novel enthusiasts with a touch of thrill.

Cheers.

I read the Lord of the Rings trilogy for the first time when I was 13, and The Silmarillion and all the others after that, but strangely enough I never read any academic research on it, until this one. I'll be sure to search for the works that are mentioned in this book's bibliography.

This is a well-researched interpretation of several places in The Lord of the Rings, written in a language that is adequate to a systematic study of a lyrical subject, without falling into the usual trap of being too dry or indecipherable. It starts off extremely well, with an explanation of fantasy literature and its place and acceptance among other genres. However, the chapters about LOTR itself could have been more ambitious. I felt that the interpretation was at times very simplistic or rushed. And the conclusion confused me - why start a rant against Portuguese cultural agents in a book like this?

Still, this was a good book and I'm happy to see such great work being written and published in Portugal.