Inferno – Dan Brown

I’ll try my best to keep it spoiler free. I don’t plan on giving away any major points of the plot so you can continue reading.

Just like the rest of the novels featuring Robert Langdon, this too is set as a race against time where he has to follow clues to find out where to go next.Compared to the other novels this one has a slower pace and less drama/action so that was a little disappointing but just like the other novels it is not at all boring.  

The novel is based around Dante Alighieri and his work Divine Comedy. There are no secret societies or cults in this book, which is what we usually associate with Dan Brown’s novels. Instead it revolves around science. The antagonist in the novel is geneticist and Dante fanatic named Bertrand Zobrist who proclaims to have found a solution to solve the problem of over population by drawing inspiration from the Black Death.

Robert Langdon wakes up in Florence with no memory of last two days of his life. He is saved from an assassin by one of the doctors Sienna Brooks and finds out that the first clue to finding out answers as to what is going on is hidden in a container with a  bio-hazard symbol.

The novel has Brown’s usual plot characteristics of  involving artists, famous paintings, sculptures and buildings of architectural significance, along with Langdon having a female side-kick who helps him while the novel unfurls and they travel from a country to next following clues.

I can’t write much without giving out the plot or any key points hence the short outline in this post. I consider this book worth reading. If you liked his previous novels you will like this one too.

My Rating : 4.5/5

My Take On The Daily Prompt(The Artist’s Eye)

I know the prompt says to write about a painting or sculpture I’m drawn to but I’m writing about an artist whose paintings where one of the first I saw as a child and fell in love with it instantly. The artist was my maternal grandfather.

My Grandad – The artist

He passed away when my mom was just a teenager so I never got to meet him. My mom had a collection of his sketches and paintings. When I first saw the paintings I didn’t actually know anything about art. I was too small to understand art and artists because at that time what I drew with my crayons was to me just as same as art. Older people drew big and complex pictures, kids like me drew smaller ones that are not so complex. After growing up I was able to admire his work and see more clearly how he brought pictures to life.

There is no lack of talent in my family. There are artists, sculptors, dancers, singers and writers but the first person that comes to mind when it comes to talent is my grandad.

There are two sketches I like the most and I can still recall both of them with every detail. One is a pencil sketch called “Light and Shade”, I can still see clearly in my mind the way he captured light falling on a corridor through arches and the shadows where the light couldn’t reach, every detail and shade was perfectly produced on paper with his pencil.The other one is a painting of a white kitten against a black background. The fur and eyes of the kitten was done so beautifully that you almost felt it is going to come out of the painting any minute. Unfortunately I don’t have the paintings with me or photographs of them right now, so I can’t share it with you all.

The main reason I fell in love with his paintings was that this was the proof to the life lived by a person I never met. Through his art I could see what he saw in the world through his eyes as an artist.

Light And Smoke

That’s me holding a sparkler. This was just a test shot to see if my mobile can catch bright lights in close range but it turned out be one of the best photos I took that day.