Inferno: A Novel (Robert Langdon, #4)

by Dan Brown

#1 WORLDWIDE BESTSELLER • Harvard professor of symbology Robert Langdon awakens in an Italian hospital, disoriented and with no recollection of the past thirty-six hours, including the origin of the macabre object hidden in his belongings.

“One hell of a good read.... As close as a book can come to a summertime cinematic blockbuster.” —USA Today

“A diverting thriller.” —Entertainment Weekly

With a relentless female assassin trailing them through Florence, he and his resourceful doctor, Sienna Brooks, are forced to flee.

Embarking on a harrowing journey, they must unravel a series of codes, which are the work of a brilliant scientist whose obsession with the end of the world is matched only by his passion for one of the most influential masterpieces ever written, Dante Alighieri's The Inferno.
 
Dan Brown has raised the bar yet again, combining classical Italian art, history, and literature with cutting-edge science in this captivating thriller.

• ISBN10: 0385537859
• ISBN13: 9780385537858
• Publish Date: 14 May 2013 (first published 1 January 2013)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Random House USA Inc
• Imprint: Doubleday & Co Inc.
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 480
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780385537858

Reviews

[empressbrooke]

Since Dan Brown bored me in his attempt to out Dan Brown himself on [b:The Lost Symbol|6411961|The Lost Symbol (Robert Langdon, #3)|Dan Brown|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1358274396s/6411961.jpg|6600281], I was in no rush getting to Inferno. However, he definitely improved things here and I was mostly entertained.

His writing is still stiff and often awkward (WHY does he refer to the protagonist by his full name once every chapter? We know who he is! Especially by chapter 90!), and it was about 100 pages too long, but I shall focus on the compliments I have to give.

Reversing his trend over his last couple books, he mostly stopped info-dumping at the expense of the plot. Things kept moving forward as he worked all of his informative tidbits more organically into the story. He did seem to revert back to Lost Symbol levels of stopping the plot for pages to rattle on about this thing or that towards the very end of the book, but that may have just been me being ready to be done after page 400.

There were multiple plot twists I didn't see coming! Granted, there were a couple that I thought were a bit contrived and may not have held up if I went back and re-read the previous parts with the reveals in mind (But maybe they would have! I wasn't invested enough to spend the time checking). However, the other ones left me pleasantly surprised and definitely mixed things up compared to what the series had me expecting.

The resolution was interesting and not as straightforward as I'd expected. Although I felt the book was overly lengthy and didn't need to exceed 500 pages, at the end I at least felt like there was interesting payoff.

[puchunga]

Oh wow, eso fue intenso.

Bueno, a muchas personas la serie de Robert Langdon le parece monótona y aburrida, pero para mí es una de las series más interesantes. El libro tardé mucho en leerlo, pero mientras lo leía me sentía transportada a un mundo completamente nuevo, además de todos los pequeños datos que aprendí.

Me mantuvo todo el tiempo intrigada e interesada, y cuando pensaba que ya estaba al tanto de la situación, dio un giro totalmente diferente y me dejó, una vez más, sin aliento.

Excelente libro, como todos los libros de Dan Brown, lo leería de nuevo sin pensarlo.

[jesstheaudiobookworm]

After being slightly disappointed in The Lost Symbol, I was worried that my interest in this series was waning. Years went by, I became exceedingly busy, and the release of Inferno somehow slipped under my radar. I stumbled across it in late 2014 and was excited to see that Brown decided to send Robert Langdon back to Italy, where my favorite of his books is set. This was the first of his books I've ever listened to on audiobook and while I was a little disappointed that Tom Hanks (who portrays Robert Langdon in two film adaptations) wasn't narrating, Paul Michael did an excellent job. This installment takes place in another part of Italy than Angels & Demons and focuses on a mystery surrounding the Italian poet Dante Alighieri. When compared to the ratings on Goodreads, it seems that I always tend to enjoy Dan Brown more than the average person and this installment was no exception. It felt like the Dan Brown of old, the one that originally reeled me in with The Da Vinci Code in 2006!

[viking2917]

Meh. A prisoner of his formula.

Dan Brown is a prisoner of his formula, finding some odd historical theory and exploding into a novel. Angels & Demons was fun, The Da Vinci Code was inspired, and Inferno is just.....tired. Too much "tour guiding", and forced plot derived from Dante's Inferno.

He should break out of his prison and try something new.

[pamela]

I must admit that I found myself enjoying this book! It had the traditional Dan Brown formula, but the themes were thought provoking, and it actually made me ask myself deep moral questions, and on which side I would stand were I faced with the decisions the characters faced.

Then 3/4 of the way through the whole book got silly. There were too many twists, most of which made very little sense, and too many lucky coincidences, and red herrings. It was a fun read, but fell short of being the surprisingly good book I thought it could be.

[cornerfolds]

I enjoyed this book almost as much as Rober Langdon 1-3. My only observation (not necessarily complaint) is that I felt like I was being smacked in the face with history more than in the other three. It seems like every single chapter began with two paragraphs of historical tidbits.

[clq]

Yes, Inferno is contrived, unrealistic, corny, clichéd, and probably linguistically inadequate.

But it is really good fun.

Sure, it doesn't take long for the book to turn into the standard Dan Brown game of cat and mouse. Fortunately, that seems to kind of be his thing, and the book makes for an incredibly entertaining game of cat and mouse. The story revolves around The Divine Comedy, a 14th century work by Dante and, surprise, various pieces of art based on this work. This time it all begins with Mr. Langdon waking up in a hospital without being able to remember how he got there. It takes about one chapter for someone to start shooting at him, and everything escalates from there. It doesn't take long for the story to start moving at an incredible pace, and it's truly impressive how well the tension and drama is sustained for over 400 pages. As one would expect there is a good deal of general trivia about art, symbolism and so on, but only just enough for the atmosphere and tone of the story to be maintained, without distracting from or breaking the pace of the actual events that are taking place.
The characters are no less shallow than they need to be to play their part in the story, but honestly, who cares about the lack of character development? Who cares if a bunch of really intelligent people happen to not figure out something trivial until the story calls for it? Who cares if super-elite-infallible-organisation(tm) happens to repeatedly make mistakes when it suits the narrative? That's not the point. Anyone picking up this book seeking intricate relationships, character development, and elaborately constructed sub-plots should (and probably do) know better. Inferno is as formulaic and typical as anyone would hope, anticipate, or fear that it is. Regardless of what one might think of the formula, it is followed with great success. Inferno is certainly more entertaining than The Lost Symbol, and I think it might just have overtaken Deception Point to become my new favourite Dan Brown book.

Is this a book I will still be thinking about three days from now? Probably not. Of course, the book ends on the usual pseudo-political food-for-thought kind of note which ties up the story nicely. It works well as the end of the story, and as ten seconds of brain fodder while staring into space. Otherwise Inferno fits well into the category of books that are like firework-displays. It's great while it lasts, intense and colourful enough to make you go "oooooh", and has plenty of loud bangs. Then it is gone, and you realise that it might all have been a bit pointless. Maybe it is all a bit pointless. There is certainly more than enough about this book to dislike and criticise. However, if one is fortunate enough not to care too much about any of its flaws, Inferno is good fun.
Really good fun.

[Ashley]

Nose Graze — Young Adult book reviews

It took me about a million years to read Inferno because most of it was just so darn boring.

For the first half of the book, the problem is that Robert and Sienna (his female companion for most of the book) are running away from the police and assassins, but neither they nor the reader have any idea why. It's almost like a tour of Florence because they're running around through the old buildings, Robert points out architecture, tells Sienna about the history, but ultimately the purpose is to hide, run away, and escape through hidden passageways to avoid detection. But we still have no idea what's going on. And this literally takes up about 40 or 45% of the book. I was very much ready to move on and get some answers.

But, when we finally get one bit of information, that's still all we have—one bit. At least I had something to go on to hold my attention, but ultimately I didn't have the bigger picture. Sure, I had guesses, but the overall conflict still wasn't clearly laid out.

Unlike Dan Brown's other books (talking about The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons), Inferno suffers from huge dumpings of information. In the other books all the cool history and art information ties into the overall story. But in Inferno it's just constantly thrown in our faces. Say Langdon is heading to Place X. Along the way he passes by monuments A, B, and C. So, naturally, we get the entire history of A, B, and C, even though they have zero relation to the overall story. This happened throughout the book, resulting in the reader being given huge amounts of unnecessary information that ultimately led to me being bored bored BORED.

I did enjoy some bits of the information and how all ties into the Black Plague, but ultimately... I just didn't care that much. I didn't have that same feeling of awe when it all came together as I did in his previous book. It didn't feel as huge and monumental and "all revealing". Towards the end I just started skimming because I was so ready to be done with this huge book that sucked up like 5 days of my life.

Ultimately I'm really sorry to say that Inferno doesn't live up to the epicness of Dan Brown's previous books. So even if you're a fan of The Da Vinco Code and/or Angels & Demons (like I am), I can't recommend Inferno.