Hello everyone!
I think ... no, I'm fairly sure that I've never before reviewed one of Dan Brown's books on my blog.
Let me do a quick search to double-check.
I have not.
BUT I do have the review for the movie Inferno, which is the latest in the Robert Langdon series with Tom Hanks in the titular role, so I'm going to be including the link to that one at the very bottom of this page. And maybe someday I'll be bored enough to actually reread the lot of the books and review them one by one. That job alone would give me food for these posts for two solid months!
Anyway.
Origin, the subject of tonight's post, is the absolute latest of Brown's novels and it once again features professor Robert Langdon doing what he usually does best: solving puzzles people left behind for him.
In this case, we're once again dealing with the Church.
I think Dan Brown has a thing for the Church, whether this would be love or hate remains to be seen, because I can't remember any of Langdon's adventures NOT having something to do with religion of some form. That being said, however, it's not super overpowering like some Christian novels can be where every second sentence is a quote from holy texts.
Don't get me wrong! I have nothing against that kind of thing. It's just that in a mystery or suspense, they can very much drag events down.
I should probably also note that myself and my family have been fans of Dan Brown since The Da Vinci Code was first published in our country, something I still remember fondly. Turns out that the mentioned book and Angels and Demons were a perfect gift for my father at the time. Since then, we have bought every other Brown book in existence, all in the beautiful hardcover formats that stand proudly on my shelf now.
That is, until Origin landed, hot out of the printer's (where's an A. Malcolm when you need one, right?), and my dad issued a royal decree:
"Thou shalt not buy that ridiculous hardcover for this one. We will await the mass paperback edition!"
Almost literally. There's a reason why we call him King Louis on occasion.
Anyway, I grabbed an electronic copy as soon as it was available because my personal experience with Brown's books is that, no matter how I may scoff at what's written on the back, I'll inevitably sit there to devour the whole thing in one go, or a maximum two if I REALLY need to participate in real life.
Imagine the monster I am then.
Finally, to Origin.
Robert Langdon is invited to Spain to attend a presentation by one of his former students - actually, one of his first Harvard students ever, Edmond Kirsch, at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. What we as readers learn before this even begins, however, is that Kirsch visited three leaders of different religions to show them the presentation and his findings before this. See, he had discovered the answers to Mankind's most pressing questions: where do we come from? Where are we going?
Meanwhile, I'm sitting here gaping at not knowing that the religious leaders usually get together for tea and scones every once and a while at some sort of religious summit (okay, take this with a grain of salt, I'm a novice here) and there are STILL nutters out in the world.
Word.
What we also learn is that all three of the leaders are shocked and worried about this discovery - but that out of the three, only the Catholic survives, and he happens to have the ear of the ailing King of Spain.
We'll get back to him in a tiny bit, let's move to Langdon for now.
The professor is a little miffed when he gets an interesting headset for his walk around the museum and the presentation later, and he gets to chat with the person on the other end, named Winston, who tells him the ins and outs and gaily manages to keep Langdon entertained while waiting and meeting with his friend Edmond pre-presentation.
What Langdon doesn't realise until late in the game when Winston explains this himself is that Winston, the helpful guide, is actually simply an articifial intelligence - or an AI. He doesn't exist outside a computer.
Let's leave the professor with his shock over that and go into the presentation where even he begins to realise the implications around the globe will be huge, especially once his intelligent brain starts putting two and two together regarding religion and what could potentially have been the finding of his dear friend and former student.
Unfortunately, said friend gets killed before he can actually make the revelation.
His assassin, an Admiral Avilla, was added as a last-minute guest and wasn't exacly vetoed, and also the order came from the palace - but museum director Ambra Vidal is terrified, because one, he's an assassin, and two, the order seems to have come from her fiancé - the future king of Spain, Don Julian.
Me, I would've been 'say what now?' but Langdon sees a beautiful woman in distress and, since he's a gentleman, he decides to believe her and tag along. With Winston's help, they grab Edmond's custom-built smartphone and hotfoot it out of the museum, where Langdon learns that he can call Winston on the phone and still communicate. Other important lessons on their way to Edmond's residence to find the password and finish unveiling his secret (because, why not?) include planes taking out fences and telling control that no they haven't moved from the runway, self-driving cars, living in a house belonging to a famous artist, and that even Dan Brown succumbed to the magic of Elsa's Let it Go.
However, once on-scene, especially since they've fled the royal guard and have now realised someone is hunting them, they are no closer to finding the password of a whooping total 47 characters. It's supposed to be a poem - but what poem?
Teaming up once again with Ambra's security detail, Langdon directs them to the famous building in Barcelona (oh yes, did I mention they're not in Bilbao anymore? My mistake): La Sagrada Familia, where apparently, this book with an answer was hidden. What book is it? One of William Blake's, and the answer, or the password, is The Dark Religions are departed & Sweet Science reigns.
If you counted 46 or 48 characters, don't worry: the & sign is replaced by et in the password.
Unfortunately, we need to have a scuffle before our heroes can find Winston's power source and upload the video: Avilla is still hunting them, per orders of a mysterious Regent, but luckily Langdon hasn't lost all his nimbness yet and in the scuffle the other man falls to his death.
Then it's time to head to the power source, where Ambra and Langdon accomplish what they started: they reveal the presentation to the world. And what do we learn?
That Edmond recreated the Miller-Urey experiment on his computer, adding other components such as the laws of physics among others, and thus proved that life evolved naturally. Equally, he also predicts that soon, mankind and technology will merge, in a hopefully more utopian world than the one he left behind.
Stunned, Langdon and Ambra part ways, with Ambra returning to the palace in Madrid and her fiancé.
But wait - what actually happened to the fiancé?
Throughout the book, we are led to believe that Bishop Valdespino, the Catholic who survives the religious leader purge, is probably one of the bad guys, and considering he takes Don Julian out of the palace without anyone knowing and the Chief of the Guards is arrested for treason, yeah, it looks like it. But Valdespino actually only follows the old King's orders, and then you think, hang on, is the KING the bad guy here? Once you get to the infamous Valley of the Fallen with Julian, however, the truth is very different: namely, the king simply wants to tell his son and heir his greatest secret.
Which is that his father is actually homosexual and he and Valdespino are non traditional lovers, since the bishop has a vow of chastity and all that. Sadly, the king passes away during the night, and the bishop takes his own life to follow him. Julian, following their advice about doing what's right for the country, not for the crown, promises Ambra to start their relationship from scratch (also, she can't have kids so there's that little loop-de-loop).
We end the book with a bit of a twist though: Langdon, going over the events of the previous night, calls Winston just before, as per Edmond's orders, the AI is about to self-destruct, and pieces everything together: Winston is actually the Regent, and the hidden source for the gossip sites that fed off the excitement, and he only did what he perceived Edmond would have wanted. Namely, to make the man a martyr, ensure as many people as possible saw the presentation, and throw shade on the Palmarian Catholic Church, which Edmond blamed for the death of his mother. Horrified, Langdon realises it all really came down to the living computer, but with Winston now fully gone, who would even believe him?
So instead, he returns to Sagrada Familia (in a scene where I giggle over the clucking of the poor pater who's horrified that LANGDON had to wait in line) where he and many others look up at the sunlight passing through the painted windows, feeling hopeful.
Ta-da!
We've come to the end of this doozy! I mean, come on, I was fairly sure it was going to be either the bishop or the king (I never really suspected Julian since, well, I'm a softie) but I never would have considered that it would be Winston. With Edmond dying from cancer, however, it makes sense that he might have given the kill order just to avoid further suffering. I guess? In any event, while the beginning of Edmond's message may have sounded dangerous, the ending is hopeful, though even if something of the kind truly does happen - a merge between humanity and technology - I highly doubt religion would ever be eradicated completely.
Not that quickly, in any event.
This book wasn't quite the same tourist guide for Barcelona as Inferno had been for Florence, which is probably why I enjoyed it more. It had more of the old-school Langdon vibe. I appreciated that.
But come ON Brown! Can you cut the man some slack and give him a woman to keep him happy?!
xx
*image not mine
No comments:
Post a Comment