The Lost Symbol, available wherever books are sold on 9.15.09, once again features Dan Brown’s unforgettable protagonist, Robert Langdon. The book’s narrative takes place in a twelve-hour period, and from the first page, readers will feel the thrill of discovery as they follow Langdon through a masterful and unexpected landscape. Dan Brown’s prodigious talent for storytelling, infused with history, codes and intrigue, is on full display in this riveting new novel.


Dan Brown is one of those authors that can write basically anything and still sell millions of books. After reading The Lost Symbol, I must say I did enjoy reading it. It was an adventurous thrill ride that kept me on the edge of my seat. Nevertheless, The Lost Symbol was, of course, not as great as The Da Vinci Code. In my opinion, although The Lost Symbol wasn’t a bad book, it was still a letdown.

Before I begin reviewing the book and showing how the book was made, here’s a quick overview of the book (No Spoilers!).

The Lost Symbol accelerates through a startling landscape toward an unthinkable finale. As the story opens, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned unexpectedly to deliver an evening lecture in the U.S. Capitol Building. Within minutes of his arrival, however, the night takes a bizarre turn. A disturbing object — artfully encoded with five symbols—is discovered in the Capitol Building. Langdon recognizes the object as an ancient invitation . . . one meant to usher its recipient into a long-lost world of esoteric wisdom. When Langdon’s beloved mentor, Peter Solomon—a prominent Mason and philanthropist —is brutally kidnapped, Langdon realizes his only hope of saving Peter is to accept this mystical invitation and follow wherever it leads him. Langdon is instantly plunged into a clandestine world of Masonic secrets, hidden history, and never-before-seen locations—all of which seem to be dragging him toward a single, inconceivable truth.

Okay, now some advice to Dan Brown:

Get a new editor. There were some whole passages, even chapters, that served no purpose other than to inflate your book to an unnecessary size. I don’t mind reading big books, but I do mind reading through unnecessary words. Ch. 69, for example, is unnecessary.

Location to Location. We don’t need to know exactly how every character moves from one location to the next, which turn they took, what street they walked across. If it serves the plot, if the geography is important (as it was in Angels and Demons), then fine. Geography was crucial at certain moments in this book, but many times, the passages when you describe how someone moves from one part of a house to another part, what door they opened and closed, all that is boring and tedious.

We know there’s going to be a movie, but…don’t write your novel like a screenplay. Whether you’ve done it consciously or not, your short chapters read as if you had in mind exactly what camera shots you expect out of an inevitable movie adaptation. Leave that to the screenwriter. Write your novel as a novel.

Now that that’s aside, overall, I really enjoyed the book. It was a constant thrill ride with twists and turns that left me guessing each time. I would recommend it to anyone who is looking to have a good time. One video I came across when I purchased The Lost Symbol from Amazon was titled “The Making of a Five Million Copy Book” (see below for video). I found this quite interesting. The video took us through the production process of the book from the cover creation all the way to the binding. It was a great look into a side of a business that we rarely get to see.