The Lost Symbol

Dan Brown

Sep 2009 · Robert Langdon Series Book 3 · Sold by Anchor

About this ebook

#1 WORLDWIDE BESTSELLER • An intelligent, lightning-paced thriller set within the hidden chambers, tunnels, and temples of Washington, D.C., with surprises at every turn. • Don’t miss the Peacock original series Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol!

“Impossible to put down.... Another mind-blowing Robert Langdon story.” —The New York Times

Famed Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon answers an unexpected summons to appear at the U.S. Capitol Building. His plans are interrupted when a disturbing object—artfully encoded with five symbols—is discovered in the building. Langdon recognizes in the find an ancient invitation into a lost world of esoteric, potentially dangerous wisdom.

When his mentor Peter Solomon—a long-standing Mason and beloved philanthropist—is kidnapped, Langdon realizes that the only way to save Solomon is to accept the mystical invitation and plunge headlong into a clandestine world of Masonic secrets, hidden history, and one inconceivable truth ... all under the watchful eye of Dan Brown's most terrifying villain to date.

Ratings and reviews

Apparently Dan Brown has lost all pretense of even pretending his stories could be anything but fantasy. It almost seems like the only purpose of this book is to apologize to religious readers that he may have offended with his previous Robert Langdon adventures. Any attempt at scientific explanation is gone, the mystery is simply uninteresting, as most are when the answer to the mystery is simply "magic".

Robert Langdon is again taken away from his Symbology duties at Harvard to keep an ancient secret hidden from the world and a new evil from obtaining said secret. This time it's not the Old World but the New that requires Langdon's services. He is lured to Washington D.C. by a cunning evildoer who is bent on obtaining the Word, an ancient saying or symbol that will supposedly give him immense power, including being able to be anywhere his mind imagines. Langdon starts in the Capitol Rotunda where his friend Peter Solomon's hand has been found pointing upward with a symbol tattooed on it. He then descends deep below the capitol as the Masonic ties become clearer. He ends up hooking up with Katherine Solomon (Peter's sister), only to be outsmarted by the evildoer Mal'akh again and again. He is always ten steps ahead of them. Mal'akh ends up being Peter's son, Zachary, who we were led to believe was killed by Mal'akh. Mal'akh uses a cruel trick to get Langdon to reveal the location using the symbols on the bottom of the Masonic Pyramid. (Landgon believes he is going to drown, when in fact it is simply a hyperberic chamber.) Mal'akh is killed when a helicopter hovering over the Masonic Temple blows out the skylight, scattering glass all over his tattooed body. Peter Solomon then reveals that the Word is in fact the "smart" way of reading the Bible, and Mr. Brown continues to have us believe that all the best secrets are hidden in plain sight. Mr. Brown uses so many literary cheats that he should be locked up. He hides information from conversations from the reader, letting the reader believe that the conversation's full breadth is already understood and revealed, only to insert a vital piece of information later on (he does this with Langdon's original call to Mal'akh, whom he believes is Anthony from Peter Solomon's office). Mr. Brown also continues his infatuation with adverbs and adjectives. The darkness cannot simply be black; it must be inky black. He also overdoes the repetition. "It's buried out there somewhere" is not only repeated endlessly in the first fifty pages, but it also turns out that the It referred to is not in fact the It were were believed It was. Again, it seems that Mr. Langdon does his research in Wired Magazine. Like the other books the parts I found most interesting were those that dealt with the origin of words. Sincerely was thoroughly dissected to the my pleasure to mean "without wax," which plays in beautifully to Mr. Brown's previous statements about how Solomon sealed his envelopes. But right after that beautiful scene he again returns to the land of short chapters, shorter paragraphs and turning developing science into a national security threat. His target this time was Noetic Science, an ambitious attempt to explain what has previously been unattainable. I credit his attempts to being it "mainstream", but the Haunted House feeling he attempts to provide discount the potential breakthroughs and the seriousness which true Noetic Science practitioners feel toward their practice. Overall, a decent read, but not as gripping as The Da Vinci code.

Better than DaVinci Code, as much of a page turner as Angels and Demons. Similar to his other stories with the religious, symbolic, and philosophic theme, as well as the typical deranged villian and Langdon's beautiful sidekick. The end of the book itself wasn't terribly climactic but the whole plot from the first few chapters through the end was very exciting. Definitely worth the read.

About the author

DAN BROWN is the author of numerous #1 international bestsellers, including The Da Vinci Code, Inferno, The Lost Symbol, Angels & Demons, Deception Point, and Digital Fortress.