Cult of Dan Brown: Thoughts

I know that this is a really old thread, but it seems to come closest to my own thoughts so I will take the liberty of reviving it.

I also stumbled over a lot of strange behaviour which made me stop and think "Why would he do THAT?" or "How is THAT possible". It is always irritating when this happens but it is really irritating when it happens in a story which try to appear possible and true to facts.

Strangely, it seems from the threads on this forum that most of the things which stopped me have not annoyed anybody else:

1. The priest/scientist controversy
Shortly after arriving at CERN, Langdon tells Kohler about Galileo's attempt to unite science and religion. A few minutes later. Langdon learns that Leonardo Vetra was trying to unite science and religion and finds the thought unbelievable. Why?

2. Buying time in the archives
The archives consist of multiple airtight compartments, each with a controlled athmosphere with a limited quantity of oxygen. I can accept that Langdon wants to examine the Diagramma within the controlled athmosphere since that is what he is trained to do. But why does he not take the container with the Diagramma to another one of these compartments when the oxygen starts to disappear from the compartment he is in?

3. Locating an antimatter container and a wireless camera.
We know that the antimatter and a wireless camera is stored somewhere together. We also know that the Swiss Guard have a lot of fancy electronics for tracing electronic transmissions. Still noone seems to at least consider the possibility of tracing the signal from the wireless camera, even though this of course must be strong enough to be detected - otherwise they would not be able to see the transmission from the camera. Why? This one really destroyed much of the reading pleasure for me. Whenever the search of the canister's magnetic field (of which noone had asked Vittoria for a detailed specification) was mentioned, I just thought "How stupid can you be?"

4. Predicting the exact operating time of an antimatter container.
There has to be a lot of uncertainty to the exact operating time of the antimatter container. Normally, anything you can recharge will have varying operating times depending on outside conditions and age of the energy storage. The container would probably be designed to last for at least 24 hours, with some added margin for these variations. The timer would only give a rough, conservative estimate of remaining time. Still everyone believes that the energy will run out in the exact second, the countdown reaches 0:00:00. This is so much Hollywood that I cannot believe that anyone would buy that.

5. The mirrored diamond
I had one look at the picture in the book and thought "unreadable". Then I read a little further and saw that it was a picture of the brand, not the branding. "OK, mirrored, now it makes sense: Earth, air, fire, water". After 6 pages and a view of the Camerlengo's chest, Langdon also discovers it. I know that he must be really tired at that point but does it make any sense that he cannot see that the brand must be mirrored? After all, Langdon's field of interest must include a lot of examining of old rubber stamps, rings and other devices used for making prints or imprints, so he must be very familiar with this.

6. Chartrand's role
Chartrand is the youngest and the lowest ranking of all Swiss Guards. But after the Kohler/Camerlengo episode he suddenly seems to be in command of (all?) other Swiss Guards. At least he is the one speaking when we meet him in company with other guards. I may have misunderstood this, however. He may just be the lowest ranking officer.

7. Working without any investigation support from home.
Vittoria and Langdon must have a lot of colleagues and students in their organisations which could help with the investigations, for example doing Internet searches for all Bernini's works and their current locations. Instead, Langdon uses a lot of time in the archive looking through inventory lists for signs of the third church while noone is working on finding possible locations for the fourth church.

But perhaps the most disturbing discovery was that Langdon did not have any role in the overall plot. He could as well have stayed home, and not much would be different.

He predicted the places of the killings, but he was not ably to prevent the killings.

He joined the Camerlengo in the helicopter, but he had no role in saving the Vatican from the antimatter.

He found the Illuminati Church, but this had been found by the Vatican a century earlier.

He saved Vittoria, but without his involvement, Vittoria would not have been kidnapped in the first place.

He killed the Hassassin, but I guess the Camerlengo would have wound up this loose end anyway.

He exposed the Camerlengo's evil masterplan and thus caused the Camerlengo's suicide, but since anyone agreed to keep silent afterwards, the Camerlengo succeeded with his plan.

So Langdon's contribution to the events is reduced to:
- Destroying page 5 of the Diagramma.
- Making a mess in the archives.
- Shortening the pope's reign with quite some years.

Edited by Gnavpot (07/06/05 10:02 AM)

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