The Secret of Secrets (Robert Langdon #6), by Dan Brown
The Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
Suspend your disbelief and leave your brain at home.
Oh, wow, this one was a very serious let-down: At break-neck speed, we’re (oftentimes literally) rushing through Prague with no time to reflect. There’s no place for reason, intelligent behaviour, believable developments, or anything that would give the reader time to actually think about this uninspired mess.
Worst of all: Langdon teams up with a person who calls herself a “noetic scientist”. “Noetic science” is a term you’ll find nowhere near any reputable scientific institute, serious researchers, or anything else you might consider even ever-so-slightly scientific. You won’t find it on Wikipedia either.
It’s basically a “faith-based science”, or, in plain words, complete utter bullshit (just like this novel). Brown has his heroine even tell us explicitly that her “science” should be exempted from any kind of burden of proof because that’s simply too high a bar… An “experiment” that succeeded once, the results of which have not been reproduced in decades, should be taken at face value instead. That’s Trump, MAGA, and Kennedy “science”.
Yes, the novel is suspenseful – if you disengage your brain and just follow our pair of professors-cum-action heroes and the mysterious and murderous “Golem” along on their unlikely and unbelievable ride. It’s so outlandish a story that Brown obviously felt the need to tell us in a foreword that all locations actually exist. We might not believe anything he writes otherwise.
Oh, and the title? That stroke of genius is explained tediously in the end as well. Even now, my brain hurts when I think of this novel.
One generous star out of five.
