Inferno Book Review

Inferno Book Review
By Alexis Mercer

Many years ago I read Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code. I also saw the movie. Both I enjoyed immensely. So when a new pile of books showed up at my house thanks to my mom cleaning out more of her library from home, I kept Inferno, also by Brown, at the top of the pile to read.

Slowly but surely I have been plugging away at it. The book is 463 pages long, so it was no small endeavor. And summer time always means full days of sunshine, fresh air and activity, so when I lay down to read before falling asleep, it isn’t often more than just a few pages before I find my eyelids sinking.

Thankfully Inferno was entertaining from beginning to end. The main character of The DaVinci Code, Robert Langdon, is the protagonist in this book as well. There is no mention (at least that I remember) of his adventures in the other book, this one having been published a full decade after the other. 

Langdon wakes up in a hospital bed in Florence, Italy, with zero recollection as to why he is there, how he got there, or what the injury to his head came from. He does have slight flashes of a woman with silver-grey hair who warns him “Seek, and ye shall find”, though Langdon has no idea what the vision means or why he sees her.

Quickly his world becomes even stranger as the hospital room is attacked by an unknown woman and he flees with the help of Sienna Brooks, one of the doctors who was attending to him that night. In the fast paced series of events to come in the next hours, Langdon comes to realize he is in the middle of a scheme by a scientist to destroy the world with a plague and that Langdon himself is one of the only people who might have the knowledge and power to stop him.

Throughout the novel, Brown weaves in imagery of the famous scenery from the countries where the action takes place. He describes real life events, art, sculptures, buildings and streets from these iconic locations, adding details to the book that help the reader feel as if she is traveling there herself.

Dan Brown provides a fantastic storyline in Inferno that weaves reality with fiction and delights the reader with suspense and beautifully written words. Inferno is a great read. Hopefully the remainder of the boxes of books my mom dropped off are just as entertaining.

---