Inferno: A Novel by Dan BrownSeries: Robert Langdon #4
Publication Date: May 14, 2013
Pages: 480
Add on: Goodreads
Buy the Book: Amazon
Rating: ★★★½
Source: Personal Copy
Genre: Fiction / Thrillers / Suspense
Publisher: Doubleday / Penguin Random House
‘Seek and ye shall find.’
With these words echoing in his head, eminent Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon awakes in a hospital bed with no recollection of where he is or how he got there. Nor can he explain the origin of the macabre object that is found hidden in his belongings.
A threat to his life will propel him and a young doctor, Sienna Brooks, into a breakneck chase across the city of Florence. Only Langdon’s knowledge of hidden passageways and ancient secrets that lie behind its historic facade can save them from the clutches of their unknown pursuers.
With only a few lines from Dante’s dark and epic masterpiece, The Inferno, to guide them, they must decipher a sequence of codes buried deep within some of the most celebrated artefacts of the Renaissance – sculptures, paintings, buildings – to find the answers to a puzzle which may, or may not, help them save the world from a terrifying threat…
Set against an extraordinary landscape inspired by one of history’s most ominous literary classics, Inferno is Dan Brown’s most compelling and thought-provoking novel yet, a breathless race-against-time thriller that will grab you from page one and not let you go until you close the book.
REVIEW
Dan Brown’s fourth Robert Langdon adventure, Inferno, plunges readers into a frantic chase through Florence’s shadowy streets, mixing Renaissance secrets with doomsday science. Waking up in an Italian hospital with no memory and a bullet wound, Langdon quickly finds himself hunted, and only Dr. Sienna Brooks, a quick-thinking doctor with secrets of her own, seems to be on his side.
The stakes? Nothing less than the fate of humanity. A brilliant but unhinged geneticist has devised a virus to “solve” overpopulation, and Langdon’s only hope of stopping him lies in deciphering cryptic clues rooted in Dante’s “Divine Comedy.” Brown blends the poetry of the past with the panic of the present, tying Dante’s hellish visions to real-world fears about unchecked population growth and bioethics.
Brown’s style is as breathless as ever: short chapters, cliffhangers, and a relentless pace that barrels through Florence’s museums and crypts. The art, architecture, and history aren’t just window dressing; they’re the keys to the whole puzzle, and Brown clearly revels in the details. Sometimes, he revels a little too much: historical tangents can bog things down, and the writing can feel bulky when it lingers. The plot twists come thick and fast, occasionally stretching belief, but rarely letting the pulse drop.
What Brown does best is turn centuries-old art and literature into ticking time bombs. The moral questions: who gets to decide humanity’s fate, and at what cost?, linger long after the last page. Character depth isn’t the main attraction here, but the high concept and breakneck plotting keep the pages flipping.
For anyone craving a thriller that’s as much about cryptic clues and classical art as it is about global catastrophe, Inferno delivers. It’s not as tight or iconic as The Da Vinci Code, but it’s a wild ride packed with ideas that feel eerily relevant. Entertaining and provocative, even if it sometimes stumbles under its own weight.
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
