My Dan Brown Sucks Rant

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koan
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My Dan Brown Sucks Rant

Post by koan »

From "The Lost Symbol"



The top secret research chamber is airplane hangar sized with a football field sized secondary chamber. Pitch black 7 minute walk of disorienting lack of light to get to the inner chamber. Obviously setting this up to resolve a problem that his story would not survive otherwise.

‎ Assuming we buy the secret lab premise... it's set up entirely so that only two people know of it. Suddenly a third person is in the lab and we are asked to backtrack and accept that she's always been there.

Meanwhile we are given our villain who we might respect because he's worked his way up to the 33 degree Mason. Then Brown steals that respect away by making him a billionaire who bought his way in.

‎ Our villain could also be respected for the intensity of tattooing mystical symbols over every inch of his body except he's a moron now who has to put makeup all over his face to hide the tattoos every time he leaves the house. We also have to believe that tattoos wouldn't show up as raised flesh despite makeup which anyone who uses it knows doesn't cover tattoos well and certainly doesn't cover it for very long.

On page 50 a severed hand kicks off the drama. On page 130 the characters are still standing around the hand talking about it. (That's why I've stopped to start recording my displeasure) I'm reading a story which asks me to believe ridiculous things while my hero and a few other talking heads stand around looking at a severed hand.

Our research scientist is tricked into meeting the villain who tells us later that the only interesting thing he got from the meeting was that all of her research is stored at the one location. The villain announces he knows about the secret lab which now makes it four people and no longer a secret.

‎ A lowly security guard asks the scientist when she's going to show everyone what she's working on in her secret lab.

‎ The lab wasn't too expensive to build but it's too expensive to heat.

‎ The villain's tattooed thigh, hip, and groin area is made to look like an ornately decorated archway instead of a door with a knocker on it.

We're told our hero has an eidetic memory moments after he reveals he forgot his good friend gave him an ultra secret talisman to hide from the Masons (which I'm sure is the Lost Symbol of the books title) and his eidetic memory failed to recall that earlier that day the villain had told him to dig the talisman out of his safe and bring it with him.... I'd say his memory is too busy being eidetic to function normally.

We must believe that a character who can remember every number he's ever dialed on a phone can't remember what the person he talked to at that number told him.


Top Ten Lists? Pah. Mine goes to Eleven.

There were more but I'm just too disheartened to explain to Brown fans why they have no savvy at discerning talent after we get to 11.

Posted this on facebook a while ago but it became relevant again. FG has better google results.
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Bryn Mawr
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My Dan Brown Sucks Rant

Post by Bryn Mawr »

I read the Da Vinci Code and I thought OK, interesting theory - I knew nothing to disprove it so was prepared to go along with it.

Then I read Digital Fortress - a subject I know something of. Throughout the book I was flip-flopping between laughing at the stupidity of the plot and angered by the blatant disregard of the real world. A five minute mind experiment came up with a program that was totally proof against the entire power of the supercomputer that saved the world.

After that, I couldn't face reading any of his other books - even if I didn't know the subject I'd assume that he was extracting the Michael.
koan
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Joined: Sun Oct 31, 2004 1:00 pm

My Dan Brown Sucks Rant

Post by koan »

Da Vinci Code was only good because he based it on someone elses life work. (Michael Baigent) Brown didn't come up with any of that concept himself. Beg Borrow and Steal.

I got to a line in Digital Fortress only about 20 pages in (or less) where he describes his heroine's legs in one of the worst sentenced I've ever read and refused to read further.
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Bryn Mawr
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My Dan Brown Sucks Rant

Post by Bryn Mawr »

koan;1373379 wrote: Da Vinci Code was only good because he based it on someone elses life work. (Michael Baigent) Brown didn't come up with any of that concept himself. Beg Borrow and Steal.

I got to a line in Digital Fortress only about 20 pages in (or less) where he describes his heroine's legs in one of the worst sentenced I've ever read and refused to read further.


A good decision - it really isn't worth it.
koan
Posts: 16817
Joined: Sun Oct 31, 2004 1:00 pm

My Dan Brown Sucks Rant

Post by koan »

Every Brown book I've read has a ridiculous solution that he starts setting up "facts" to help us believe from the first few chapters. It will be someone falling from a helicopter and using his coat as a parachute, or someone killed in a floatation tank who survives because it's filled with oxygenated fluid, or someone who works in a massive lab surrounded by impenetrable darkness that helps her escape. He's so set on convincing us something could happen he sacrifices the more important question of whether it should. If his goal is to pull off the unbelievable he's succeeding. If his goal is to be good at what he does, he has thus far failed.

The Twilight books are horrid too but the intended audience is much younger so she gets off the hook. She's no Rowling though.

Guess if you write conspiracies or sci-fi the readers ignore the actual writing style.
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Bryn Mawr
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My Dan Brown Sucks Rant

Post by Bryn Mawr »

koan;1373441 wrote: Every Brown book I've read has a ridiculous solution that he starts setting up "facts" to help us believe from the first few chapters. It will be someone falling from a helicopter and using his coat as a parachute, or someone killed in a floatation tank who survives because it's filled with oxygenated fluid, or someone who works in a massive lab surrounded by impenetrable darkness that helps her escape. He's so set on convincing us something could happen he sacrifices the more important question of whether it should. If his goal is to pull off the unbelievable he's succeeding. If his goal is to be good at what he does, he has thus far failed.

The Twilight books are horrid too but the intended audience is much younger so she gets off the hook. She's no Rowling though.

Guess if you write conspiracies or sci-fi the readers ignore the actual writing style.


Can't agree there, I've read quite a lot of sci-fi where the writing style and the quality of writing has been excellent - it's generally the plot and the science behind it that's let the story down.
koan
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My Dan Brown Sucks Rant

Post by koan »

My mistake. I was thinking of stories with vampires/werewolves... fantasy, horror.
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Bryn Mawr
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My Dan Brown Sucks Rant

Post by Bryn Mawr »

koan;1373453 wrote: My mistake. I was thinking of stories with vampires/werewolves... fantasy, horror.


Ah, dragons and quests - too many writers thinking it's easy pickin's
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