Book Review - The Lost Symbol

Dan Brown and Stephanie Meyer have something in common.  They both write best sellers that are poorly written and loved by Mormons!  I'm not quite sure why Mormons love Vampire vs. Werewolf teen romances, but I don't think it's a fascination unique to them.   Mormons love to support celebrity Mormons (there is a buzz whenever one of "us" is on any reality TV show) and I'm sure Meyers enjoys some extra numbers in her fan club merely due to the fact that she has that Mormon pedigree:  a degree from Brigham Young University and living in Mesa, Arizona.

Dan Brown, however, is not LDS, so the reasons why his books get passed around and talked about within our religion community must come from a different place.  Again, his fan club is vast and certainly not limited to Mormons, but because his books are centered on religious conspiracy and lost "truth", there is a definite angle of understanding we mormons get because our faith began on the notion that truth had been lost, and a lot of the things that know-it-all Robert Langdon discovers jive with what we think.

A lost truth supported by Masons that mankind has the potential through knowledge and ritual to become Gods?  Umm...yeah.  We got that.  Of course we want to know why Dan Brown and Masons might think that too.  So we read.

I love his ideas but I hate his execution.   I did not read Angels and Demons but The Lost Symbol is set up exactly like his popular DaVinci Code:  each chapter ends with a da-da-da-dum cliffhanger sentence.   Chapter after chapter, it started to feel juvenile, as if the only way the author believed his reader would turn the page was if he enticed them with a carrot on a string.  Write a good story, Dan, and most readers will eagerly finish a book, no raised eyebrow necessary.

As great as his idea for this book was, the conclusion was beyond disappointing.  The big reveal was nothing at all.  Hundreds of pages, torture, man-hunts, murder and ticking-clock code breaking all for nothing.  Or nothing much.  Just like The DaVinci Code, the things people are willing to die for are just not worthy of such fellowships and masquerade.   It's like Brown spends the entire novel shouting, "Guess what!  Guess what!  You're not going to believe this!"  and then whispers, "I might know something.  Maybe."  So dissatisfying.

Throw in the fact that he repeats himself much too often (I started to roll my eyes every time he described Noetic Science....again) and used the words "shaft" and "sex organ" multiple times (don't worry, it isn't a smutty novel although Brown's unnecessary use of a thesaurus makes it seem like it is ("penis" Dan.  The word you seem to be afraid of using is "penis")) and, well, you've got yourself a page turning beach read.  But not a piece of great literature.