Origin by
Dan Brown
My rating:
2 of 5 stars
Not my favorite of Dan Brown's books.
Origin was stuffed full of exposition, but not of the usual fun, fact-filled kind--instead, it was just a lot of talk about the big secret to be revealed, with no new revelations along the way. The book opens with a carefully-orchestrated evening that read like a blow-by-blow of a PowerPoint slide show or a movie, which isn't very exciting to read about, and it felt like almost nothing happened for the first 100 pages. Pretty weird for an action/thriller book.
I think my biggest disappointment, which colored everything else, was how little history there was in here. I guess that's to be expected for a book centering around a futurist. I'll just have to wait for the next one.
Overall, I also just wasn't that surprised by the big reveal. The two discoveries just didn't seem to be that big of a deal to me--given that we're basically ignoring our impending extinction due to climate change, and the fantastic ability of some to ignore science, I can't imagine that they'd have that big an impact on how the world functions day to day.
I don't have a ton of time, so I'll just hit a few likes/didn't likes. Big spoilers ahead!
(view spoiler)[
Liked:
>> Three cheers for the king and Valdespino. I picked up a few hints of the final reveal but dismissed them because I didn't think Brown was brave enough. I was happily surprised that turned out not to be the case! Of course, maybe a happy, chaste homosexual love story isn't so "threatening" when it's wrapped up neatly in a bury-your-gays trope. See the next point, below...
Didn't Like:
>> Valdespino lived his entire life according to his strict Catholic religious principles so as not to compromise his soul...and then committed suicide? That doesn't fit with his character at all, and I can't see any point for it to happen.
>> Ambra Vidal falls in love with Langdon literally overnight. Since Angels & Demons I've been reasonably happy with how Brown writes women, but this was just awful.
>> I was also annoyed that her infertility dates back to a childhood illness. Didn't Brown establish in Inferno that something like three quarters of the population is now infertile? (This was also ignored during the description of Kirsch's population graph--there was no dramatic population drop.)
Huh?
>> I still don't understand what was happening at the palace with all the backstabbing, arrests, leaving phones behind, king unattended, etc. Winston was behind some of it, but why? Wouldn't the king be distraction enough? Why have the captain of the guard arrested?
>> I also felt like the fact that Kirsch's changed ending to his presentation was left dangling. I thought this would turn out to be Winston's doing as well, softening the message to usher in the future...but Edmund's last minute change was never addressed.
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