A Book A Week - Week 23: Inferno

This week's book:
   Inferno  by Dan Brown

Grade: C

It started out so promising.  I never read 'The DaVinci Code,' or any of the other books.  Never saw the movie, even.  But I liked the first few chapters of 'Inferno.'  Really.  Up until around page 40, I was pleasantly surprised, it was well-written and intriguing.  This was not the fiction I had been led to believe Dan Brown usually committed.  I was along for the ride and I was enjoying it.

Then I made the mistake of reading more.

Ugh... which authorial sin do I outline first?  My major quarrels are with the contents and execution, not with the mechanics, except for this annoying habit:  the author's tendency to have his dialogue be unashamedly 'on the nose.'  Like, when a character is feeling sad he'll have them say 'I'm sad,' instead of showing it.  Mr. Brown has his characters caption most things he's just explained to the reader, as if the characters needed the reassurance of saying their own internal dialogue out loud.
    Other sins:  the villains who turn out to be friendly and the friends who turn out to be villains.  Or do they?  Done to death, and you can set your watch by the reveal.  Heroes who consistently outsmart a determined and far-better armed and prepared (and non-amnesiac) adversary.  The running chase through foreign cities, where the hero doesn't even try to contact the local police, or, indeed, even get stopped by them, like Florence is used to daily gun battles so one more doesn't gain any notice.
    Also:  the author crams so many trite tropes into the story that it becomes very hard to take it seriously.  The beautiful, mysterious woman who helps the hero.  The sinister mercenaries in black.  The behind-the-scenes manipulator of things.  The insane genius with a mad agenda.  The hero with amnesia.

"Huh?" I can hear you saying.  "Amnesia?  Seriously?"
   Yup, that staple of the dearly departed weekday soap operas, amnesia, features prominently in this book.  Turns out that it's been established in prior novels that Dr. Langdon, the hero, has an eidetic memory.  He recalls everything.  So in order to generate suspense, the author gives him amnesia.  The entire first half of the novel - maybe more - is devoted to the hero re-discovering the clues to the truth that he's already figured out before the novel opens, yet can't remember.  Double Ugh.

Mr. Brown, amnesia is not a plot device, it's a cheat.  It's trite and awful and nobody comes away from an amnesia story thinking 'you know, the author really had no other choice, he had to go with amnesia.'

There is a particular Dan Brown sin that runs through the entire book: the desperate need to make a suspense story an historical travelogue.  He's incapable of not telling us every detail of everything he's researched.  It's the second worst part of this book.  Every chapter - EVERY CHAPTER - has an art or history or art history lesson as part of the narrative.  The characters either explain things to each other or explain things in their internal dialogue, as if they were teaching class.  Sure, the hero Langdon is a professor, but, jeez... shut up about it once or twice.  The constant, extensive lessons really distracted from the narrative, which wasn't all that strong to begin with.

The worst sin, by far, however, only came to light in the second half of the narrative.  Mr. Brown seems overly fond of the M. Knight Shyamalan-style 'twist,' wherein the characters reveal, through tortured dialogue exchanges, that everything the hero - and by extension the reader - knew up until that point was a lie.  And no, I don't mean 'was misunderstood,' I mean was a bald-faced lie.  This is another literary cheat and points to weak plotting and shoddy characterization.  This bothers me so much that I need to make a very strong, direct point about it.

Mr. Brown: a 'twist' is a plot reveal that the reader didn't see coming, yet makes perfect sense in context.  For instance, in 'The Sixth Sense' where it's revealed that Bruce Willis's character is, in fact, already dead but he doesn't know it.*  That reveal made the audience re-evaluate everything they knew up until that point, and did not violate anything thus far in the plot.  Unlike all the 'twists' you throw at your audience in this book.
    TELLING THE READER THAT EVERYTHING YOU TOLD THEM SO FAR IS A LIE IS NOT A 'TWIST,' IT'S A CHEAT.  AS AN AUTHOR YOU SUCK FOR DOING IT NOT ONCE, NOT TWICE, NOT THREE TIMES, BUT OVER AND OVER AND OVER.  YOU SUCK YOU SUCK YOU SUCK YOU SUCK YOU SUCK.

Okay, I got that off my chest.  I just really hate feeling cheated.  It's like I got the ring over the milk jug at the County Fair but the gap-toothed carny just won't fork over the giant Pink Panther.  It's a swindle of epic proportions.

I'm sure Mr. Brown doesn't give a rat's ass what my opinion is, he's going to sell a million of these books before the Summer's done.  The hero of the book is a 'symbologist,'** though, and studies  hidden meanings.  So I won't actually say what I think, I'll use symbols.  To wit:  Normally I read on the couch, or on my back porch, or even seated on the floor, but as a hat's-off to Mr. Brown I read the last five chapters of 'Inferno' firmly seated on my toilet, while doing my business.  Make of that what you will.

* yeah, spoiler alert 14 years later

** not a real thing

Next week:
  Earth Afire  by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston
   Sci-fi again.  New.  From the guy who wrote 'Ender's Game,' which I've never read, and several short stories I did read.  And liked.