Origin

If you are going to read Dan Brown's latest thriller Origin (#739), be sure to have your smart phone or tablet handy.  The action takes place in Spain, and I found it extremely helpful to pull up photos and videos of the many sites where key scenes are set: The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, El Escorial and the Valley of the Fallen near Madrid, and Gaudi's famous works in Barcelona Casa Mira and Sagrada Familia Basilica.  Although I've already visited El Escorial (Brown's description left out my favorite detail; St. Hyacinth's body enclosed in rock crystal beneath an altar visible from King Philip's bed.  It was a wedding present from the Pope.), I've added the other places to my bucket list.


Young tech genius Edmond Kirsch is assassinated in front of a capacity crowd attending his invitation-only lecture at the Guggenheim.  He has promised that his latest scientific discovery will change the future.  Robert Langdon, symbologist extraordinaire, is in the audience, having developed a relationship with Edmond when he attended Harvard.  Edmond had worked closely with Ambra Vidal, beautiful director of the Guggenheim, to ensure that his presentation goes perfectly.  It seems whoever killed Edmond is also responsible for setting up Langdon and Vidal to take the fall for the crime.  The two scramble to complete Edmond's mission by live-streaming the conclusion of his presentation from a secure location.  You can probably figure out the ending.  I did.


I just wondered why it seemed to take Robert Langdon so long to figure out what was going on, and who was responsible.  The answer seemed so obvious to me.  It also struck me how virulently anti-religion the tone of the book was.  That was another thing I wondered about: did Dan Brown have some traumatic experience with organized religion at some point in his life?  He seemed to soften his tone somewhat towards the end of the book, especially in the character of Father Bena at Sagrada Familia.  I must admit, I did find that off-putting.  Just my opinion, and it sure didn't keep Origin off the Best Seller list!