I am just finishing the latest’s’ Dan Brown ‘Secret of Secrets’ novel. As someone who has been / is living in Prague for 15 years, I was ready to re-discover the city – on the hope that he had created an interesting “foxhunt” beyond the most evident (and unfortunately, overcrowded) sights of the old town.
Deception is the word that would summarize it all. Let me quote some critics, who explain it better than me …" Prague, one of the novel’s main settings, should be a rich, gothic playground for mystery and intrigue. As one of the oldest cities in Europe, Brown could have leaned into its heritage and legend in a far more effective manner like he did in Angels and Demons . But Brown’s use of it in this novel feels opportunistic. The city’s legends and architecture are reduced to mere backdrop, with little emotional weight or narrative depth. It’s all surface-level spectacle, with historical references thrown in like confetti to distract from the lack of character development.".
Yet, the portrayal of such a beautiful and culturally rich city is not the most irritating of the points. Reaching last week chapter 15 (of 140 or so), and seeing so clearly already the mechanics of the writing, the structure of the plot, the simplicity of the writing style, and being already able to predict where the novel was going, I thought that I could take a novel writing course, and launch my own career…
Maybe I hoped for the historical and linguistic depth from “the name of the rose” and I found myself reading " harry potter"…
And for those who read Dan Brown, here is a very funny small …critic? Don’t make fun of renowned Dan Brown – A Useful Fiction