After fifth Robert
Langdon adventure, Origin, is out!
Though adept in detailing
elements of his narrative, he fails in making them thrilling enough to keep the
reader hooked to an extended period of time. His are not ‘read in one sitting’
books anymore. You can visit a particular segment on any given day and can
revisit the next pages, probably after two days, without feeling a hangover of
the story. Yes, a thrilling work must create its hangover in the psyche of its
readers.
A direct fallout of that is
the perception being built around length of his adventure tales – yes, they are
basically the adventure tales but lack the charisma that makes adventure tales memorable
experiences, be it The Lord of the Rings or Alice in Wonderland or even Harry
Potter. A 500 pages Dan Brown book can essentially wind up in 100 pages and
mind you, most people do like that, even his fans. Apart from few discernible
readers, no one bothers to go for and in between the lines to know the
semiotics of symbols or architectural details of buildings. If needed, Google
and Wikipedia do much better job at this.
Dan Brown is not an avant-garde
writer and Robert Langdon is not an avant-garde character. The concoction of
religion, atheism and modernity that he presented in The Da Vinci Code in 2003
has seen a consistent downward slope. The Da Vinci Code presented a worn-out
subject in a new, if not fresh, flavour and people accepted it, creating a fan
base for Brown’s works. But since then, it has always been an ‘I thought so’ journey
with his books. One can easily guess where the plot is going. And moreover, he
is sounding repetitive and thus boring.
©SantoshChaubey
