Inferno by Dan Brown

Inferno (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.

Reviewed by Ashley on

2 of 5 stars

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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.

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Reading updates

  • 17 May, 2013: Started reading
  • 20 May, 2013: Finished reading
  • 21 May, 2013: Reviewed