The Most “Enthusiastic” Reviews of Dan Brown’s Inferno

Nearly a week has passed since Da Vinci Code author/very rich man Dan Brown released his latest blockbuster novel, Inferno. The book, which is perched atop many a bestseller throne, has inspired a flourish of, shall we say, passionate criticism among the media. A few choice quotations:

From The Guardian:

“He felt he was getting closer to solving the dark riddle. The engrossed writer continued to read the fat book at the laminated table. He had removed the telltale dustjacket but still had to conceal the board covers since they were decorated with a celebrated engraving by Gustav Doré and also shouted the name of the famous author Dan Brown in white lettering. No one must see him in possession of this valuable object.”

From The Washington Post:

“He has perfected the breathless art of the cliffhanger chapter, the ooky villain, the historish backdrop. His novels are like high-stakes, 500-page Mad Libs; a reader doesn’t have to worry that it will be a fun ride, just that the adverbs and proper nouns will line up in a way that honors the art form.”

From The New York Times:

“…there is the sense of play that saves Mr. Brown’s books from ponderousness, even when he is waxing wise about some ancient mystery or architectural wonder. Once the globe-trotting begins in earnest, private planes figure in the story and Langdon calls his publisher to ask for one. No, says the publisher, then adds: “Let me rephrase that. We don’t have access to private jets for authors of tomes about religious history. If you want to write ‘Fifty Shades of Iconography,’ we can talk.
Guess what: Mr. Brown has already written it. And then some.”

From The New Yorker:

“Page after page, things keep coming at you. People who sit down to read ‘Inferno’ should bring a notepad.
The book has almost no psychology, because one of Brown’s favorite plot devices is to reveal, mid-novel, that a character presented all along as a friend is in fact an enemy (see Leigh Teabing in ‘The Da Vinci Code’), or vice versa. To do that—and it’s always pretty exciting—Brown can’t give his characters much texture; if he did, they would be too hard to flip. Of course, without texture they don’t have anything interesting to say, except maybe “Stop the plane there.” The dialogue is dead. As for the rest of the writing, it is not dead or alive. It has no distinction whatsoever.”

From The Telegraph:

“As a stylist Brown gets better and better: where once he was abysmal he is now just very poor. His prose, for all its detailing of brand names and the exact heights of buildings, is characterised by imprecision. It works to prevent the reader from engaging with the story.
This mattered less in his previous novels, but with Inferno I sense for the first time that Brown is aiming at a tauter, better book, one more interested in the real world, longing to escape from the prison of his pleonasm.
But in the end this is his worst book, and for a sad, even noble, reason—his ambition here wildly exceeds his ability.”

What did you think about Dan Brown’s Inferno?