Inferno

Inferno
by
Dan Brown
read by
Paul Michael

I forgot that this was coming out. I knew that Dan Brown was working on the fourth book in the adventures of Robert Langdon, but nothing specific. And then I was listening to the radio last week, I heard an interview with Dan Brwon about Inferno, and I've got to admit that I was a little bit excited. Which is kind of weird, since the last book left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. Actually most of the book was pretty good, but towards the end there were a couple of monologues that really felt like Brown had stopped telling me a story to preach at me. Or maybe it was just way the reader said it. Shrug. Then, when I was helping out at the library, one of the audiobooks I processed was the very book that I am now listening to. I was very surprised to find that no one had put a hold on it.
I came to this serious during the height of praise for the DaVinci Code (the book not the movie). I read it and really liked it and then picked up the first book for a couple of bucks at a local bookstore wholesaler in Minneapolis where I was living at the time. I like Angels and Demons even better, in big part because it had taken me a while to get used to Brown's short chapters while reading the DaVinci Code so I didn't need to spend the time getting used to his style. It's kind of funny that I read them in the order that they made the movies. And just like the movies, it didn't matter which order they were read in. The Lost Symbol has a few references to the first two books, but you could get by without reading them and still understand the book.
This time out, Langdon starts off in Florence, which is his favorite European city, we are told many times, yet not once does he refer to it as Firenze which I think is odd. He's a Harvard professor who always tries to refer to things by their correct, in this book's case Italian, names, yet the city is always referred to by it's English name. But, it's all good, because while I am hardly the most traveled of people, I love that I have firsthand experience with the city and the historical sites they are romping through. I'm all like, "yes, that's right, the garden is up the hill from the palace". It's easy to feel smug and self-important when listening to an audiobook while sitting in your bedroom at night.
While the first half to sixty percent of the book is in Florence, they then move to Venice, which is the other city that I'm familiar with in Italy. The tourist in me was really unhappy with how little of the city was used, practically none of it, but the story-enthralled-listener in me knows that the use was exactly appropriate to the story.
I think this says more about me then it does about the book, but I kept waiting for it to suck. There were a couple of monologues towards the end of The Lost Symbol that really detracted from the story in my opinion. Not only did it dump Brown's view on religion onto us, but it really broke up the flow of the story. That did not happen this time out. There were no big speeches, just continued probably dialogue. Probable if you're one of the elite, super smart characters of the story, not like if you're me, but probable in the context of the tale.
I heard an interview with Dan Brown about Inferno, as I mentioned at the top, and in that he said that a reviewer had said about Inferno, "It's pretty good for a Dan Brown book." I'll take that further and remove the qualifier, it's pretty good. This book is frenetically paced as all of the Langdon books are. It's smart and poignant, and while not necessarily realistic for a Harvard art professor to do what he does, it is a fun romp.