Brown sticks to successful formula for The Lost Symbol
15.09.09 Catherine Neilan in The Bookseller

The book at the centre of "the publishing event of the year" has received a thumbs-up from those reviewers who read the book overnight. First out of the traps was Waterstone's Jon Howells, who took 10 hours to complete The Lost Symbol, finishing just after 5am. Tweeting from a hotel near the chain's flagship store, Howells wrote that the book was a "novel of ideas as well as codes, his most ambitious yet".

Howells also on hand to greet customers at Waterstone's flagship Piccadilly store this morning at 7am. Fans of Brown had queued since as early as 4am to be the first purchasers of the long-awaited book, which is set in America's capital city Washington DC. But Waterstone's staff spoken to at the launch this morning said it was too early to say how many copies had been bought.The Bookseller's own Benedicte Page received her copy at 1.45am, before reading and tweeting throughout the night. Her review was among one of the first - embargo breaking excepted - to go online. "A substantial book, with great pace, it’s all carried off with verve, imagination and conviction, and Dan Brown fans will most definitely not feel short changed," she concluded.
Howells added: "Although there are plenty of codes, clues and chases through old, and not so old buildings . . . and a baddie to rival the albino monk from Da Vinci Code." He said he would "advise [other readers to] take it slower".Bloomberg was less enthusiastic. Reviewer Laurie Muchnick said: "I wish I could report that Brown outdoes himself, but it’s hard to compete with two books in which your hero saves the Vatican from an anti-matter explosion and discovers that Jesus Christ has secret descendants living in France.

"Freemasonry doesn’t have the dense web of associations that Catholicism has for many people -- and Washington lacks the visual splendor of those ancient European cities, which Brown described so vividly in his last two books. That makes it harder to care when he spends pages lecturing you on ephemera. For me, the ending couldn’t come too soon."Tim Masters, entertainment correspondent for BBC News, added: "It's hard to see anyone getting too upset at The Lost Symbol. The freemasonry plot is underpinned by wider themes of modern science and ancient mysticism. What's likely to irk the reader most is the almost constant use of italics to indicate interior monologue... But despite this The Lost Symbol's 509 pages are a gripping read. Dan Brown has created a successful formula and he's stuck to it."
The Lost Symbol: review