M R. X. DentithChapter 36 has already refuted one of my hypotheses: the woman from Katherine’s vision (the reason for the fire alarm being pulled, etc.) doesn’t appear to be Katherine but rather some field agent working for someone…
Chapter 37 reveals that only two hours have passed since chapter 1. I feel like it’s been so much longer…
I seem to have got the chapter numbering wrong at some point; I’m up to chapter 37 now, which my ebook reader tells me is a mere 26% of the way through the book
Chapter 37 features Langdon being clever & makes a reference to Holmes’ dictum (which in turn makes Langdon’s clever deduction seem trite). But the problem with this chapter is that by now the reader knows more that Langdon, so his cleverness reveals something most readers have already worked out
And then chapter 38 confirms Langdon’s theory. Not in his presence; it’s just confirmed for the reader. But most readers don’t need to be carefully explained the plot in triplicate
Chapter 39 is more of the adventures of a Penguin Random House editor, who is now reminiscing about the time someone conned him into publishing their book based upon a cheap illusion.
I’m sure chapter 39 is setting something up with the whole vel spear, but at the moment it’s just yet another vague thing in a novel that is taking too long to get going
Gah; that was chapter 40!
In chapter 41 some cats materialise and Robert Langdon gets a note from the Golem
Chapter 42 reveals that the US Ambassador is a bad person. This is somehow something readers need to be told rather than just know…
Chapter 43 sees Robert Langdon put his loafers on over his wet socks
I think Brown is more interested in writing the adventures of the Penguin Random House editor than he is those of Robert Langdon. Whatever the case, chapter 45 is all about an heroic escape that turns out to be the villains making the editor think he has escaped
Brown isn’t establishing any tension in this story. As soon as character x thinks they have done something he has a section in the same chapter telling the reader what really happened
Meanwhile, back at the embassy a character who has already been named and linked to the mysterious villains turns out to not be on an Echelon database. So, we’re just being told things we already knew. Again. Thanks chapter 45
Chapter 46 is all about Pavel, Janácěk’s offsider, plotting his revenge against Langdon. I wonder if he’s going to end up as the reluctant ally?
Chapter 47 sees Langdon realise that maybe the mysterious unsigned note that has sent him to Petrin Tower was a distraction. Oh well, at least we get to hear Langdon’s thoughts on social media and texting (not a fan)
Unexpectedly, in chapter 48, the Golem kills the US attaché. We also find out that the Golem is epileptic. This is a vital clue that he’s connected to the person who invited Katherine, Langdon’s girlfriend, to Praha.
Katherine has sent Langdon a message in Enochian. But chapter 49 ends with armed police turning up at the base of the tower Langdon is currently stuck on, so translation/interpretation will have to wait.
Langdon escapes. All in one chapter (50). In the old days Brown would have got a chapter cliffhanger or two out of an escape but now… Well, this was also the problem for #Origin. I suspect his divorce robbed him of a co-author who knew how plotting worked…
Chapter 51 reveals something most readers probably already expected: the Golem is not after Katherine at all. His fixation is with someone else entirely!
More Penguin Random House stuff in chapter 52. Another pointless piece of plot procrastination.
Another “exciting” escape sequence that is over and done in half a chapter. You might think a maze of mirrors might make for an interesting narrative, but chapter 53 would prove you wrong
Chapter 55 is back at the embassy, where someone signs an NDA. That’s it. It takes 2 pages.
Chapter 36 is all about the Devil’s Bible/Codex Gigas. Most of what Brown writes about the book is exaggerated, but that is what he does; the rubric at the beginning about “Every artefact and organisation is described accurately” is part of the fiction, after all.
36? 55 rather. This is sign that I should go to sleep now
I’m only 38% through the book!
Chapter 56 is ostensibly a Penguin Random House chapter but really it is an excuse for more of Katherine’s theory of consciousness. She’s apparently written a book on nonlocal consciousness, and it all sounds a little like panpsychism, but even more nonsensical
Apologies to the panpsychics out there, but you have to admit the theory does come off badly when described by an inept writer of airport thrillers!
Chapter 57 is just padding
Chapter 58 is also padding. So much of this book is written to get to an arbitrarily high page count
Chapter 59 exists primarily to tell readers that Dan Brown knows that about Kafka…
Chapter 60 is more of Katherine’s theory, which will amount to as much as Langdon finding out that Jesus had children, or that a virus rendered much of the population infertile a few years ago…
Chapter 61 sees Langdon go visit the Devil’s Bible in the Klementinum. Brown also suggests that a native of Praha won’t know the Klementinum well, which I don’t think is true, given the Czechs I know…
Meanwhile, back at Penguin Random House, two men discuss IT security and Brown has the temerity to say one of his characters needs an editor. Actually, not only does Brown have the temerity to write that, but an editor let him…
Katherine has turned up in a secret bookcase. This would be a fascinating event if Brown also hadn’t introduced the idea of secret bookcases and hidden stairwells a paragraph earlier. Chapter 63 is yet another example of a cozy chapter with no actual tension
Chapter 64 is all about lovers reunited.
Chapter 65 gives us more of the Golem’s backstory. Except most of it we have already been told or shown, so we don’t actually learn anything particularly new…
In chapter 66 a member of the UZSI creates a diplomatic incident by moving a display case
Meanwhile, back at Penguin Random House we find out that Q hacked the servers. Chapter 67, everybody!
In chapter 68 Robert Langdon, the noted and famous symbolist of Harvard, burns a book manuscript in a famous Czech library
Not just any book manuscript, the same manuscript people have been killed over. It seems like a weird plot point for the halfway mark of the book
Chapter 69 sees the US cavalry (well, marines) ride in and save the say. This almost feels like the end of the story, except there are 70-ish more chapters to go…
Chapter 70 sees Langdon work yet another thing the reader was told earlier: the hotel room he shared with Katherine had been bugged by the US Embassy
The Golem goes to the Jewish Graveyard in Praha. That is the sum total of chapter 70
I’ve once again missed a chapter number. In chapter 72 Brown, via his characters Langdon and Katherine, mangles both a discussion of the replication crisis and quantum physics whilst arguing that consciousness experiments need not be repeatable. Although apparently the big finding Katherine made is…
Chapter 74 concerns the bliss of post epileptic seizures and how they apparently let you see the world as it is…
No, that last summary was of chapter 73. The real chapter 74 is all about how Katherine’s big discovery is that when we die we connect with the universe… Which sounds a) like new age nonsense and b) the topic of several existing new age nonsense books…
Chapter 75 sees Langdon and Katherine arrive at the ambassador’s resident, where they look at some Nazi chairs
I’m over halfway through this book and I feel it’s a commitment I did not need to make!
Chapter 76 ends with Langdon making a phone call and is mostly about the evils of NDAs
Actually, this chapter is kind of clever. Over the course of the novel all extant copies of Katherine’s forthcoming book on nonlocal consciousness have been destroyed, and the reason why the NDA neither she nor Langdon sign is to prevent her from ever rewriting the book…
Chapter 77 reveals that not only are the villains (well, the non-Golem ones) the CIA, but the US Ambassador was once a member of that “august” agency
Chapter 78 is mostly about how Dan Brown has decided to make Q the real villain in all of this. I’m sure he thought it was very clever to get on the whole Q and QAnon thing, even though it’s pretty old hat by now, but the CIA are running Q!
In chapter 79 the Golem kills an American intelligence officer
Chapter 80 and we have the turncoat character who goes from antagonist to ally. In this case it’s the US Ambassador, who seems to have developed a moral centre post her attaché dying.
Chapter 81 features two women coming up with a clever plan, only for Langdon to decide there is a better option, but that has to wait for the chapter cliffhanger…
Chapter 82 recaps the story so far from the point of the lead villain, head of Q. It’s just more of what we already know repeated back to us in excruciating detail because the author does not trust that his audience might connect really obvious dots
Chapter 83 is my last chapter before bed, and it ends with the editor at Penguin Random House deciding to use an LLM after all!
What to say about chapter 84? It advances the plot by getting the nominal heroes en route to the mystery location the CIA has built under Praha, but it also features product placement for The Chronicles of Narnia and Ted Lasso.
I haven’t even finished chapter 85 but in this chapter metaphysics is said to be the same as parapsychology and. This. Will. Not. Stand!
And the noted symbologist has just stated that a universal constant for every religion is a belief in souls, which just ain’t true
Chapter 86 reveals that the Golem left a note for the US Ambassador when he killed her attache