I highly recommend the works of Dan Brown, particularly Angels and Demons and Deception Point. I hesitate to say why I recommend them, because I can’t really do that without massive spoilers.
I will say this: just because the characters in the books are not particularly rational does not mean the story itself is not rational. These books have a very important lesson to teach, and even though the characters may or may not learn that lesson, an observant reader should.
Another way of alluding to what’s going on here: experience has taught us to reason about plots and attempt unravel mysteries in fiction according to certain tropes. However what’s frequently true in fiction is often almost never to never true in real life. You will make more sense of these books if you come to the same conclusions from the scenes you read as you would were you to encounter those scenes in real life, rather than to the conclusions you would usually come to in a standard work of suspense fiction.
I remember thinking well of Angels and Demons. The Da Vinci Code, however, was, at every turn, horribly implausible. And Digital Fortress runs purely on Idiot Ball. The protagonist only distinguishes herself by being the person who carries the ball the least
EDIT: Also, Angels & Demons came up incidentally in a Facebook discussion between religion/English major friends of mine; Angels & Demons is nearly as jam-packed with completely false information as his other work. It turns out all of Dan Brown’s books are Dan Browned
Dan Brown’s books are thinly veiled nonfiction conspiracy theorizing, aren’t they? He really believes all this stuff. Maybe that’s what causes this effect?
Well, they are suspense novels so yes, there are bad guys in the plot; and yes they are conspiring to certain ends. But I am aware of no evidence that Brown really believes this stuff any more than Neal Stephenson, for example, believes his stories.
Here’s what surprised me about these books. Read them. Pay careful attention to what is actually described; i.e. not what the characters infer from the events of the book but what the characters actually see. You can reason from there in two ways:
1) Base your conclusions on traditional suspense novel tropes.
2) Base your conclusions on what you would likely think if you saw these admittedly implausible events in real life.
One approach will leave you confused. One will not.
I was speculating on the cause of this effect, not disputing it.
As for whether he believes in these conspiracies … well, I know for a fact that they’re based on real conspiracy theories with actual proponents, although I’m not sure where I heard that he believes them himself. I suppose he might be simply using them as inspiration; I’ll try and track down my source on that.
ETA: a moment’s quick googling reveals that
Much criticism also centers on Brown’s claim found in the preface to The Da Vinci Code that the novel is based on fact in relation to Opus Dei and the Priory of Sion, and that “all descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents and secret rituals in [the] novel are accurate.” [Wikipedia]
I highly recommend the works of Dan Brown, particularly Angels and Demons and Deception Point. I hesitate to say why I recommend them, because I can’t really do that without massive spoilers.
I will say this: just because the characters in the books are not particularly rational does not mean the story itself is not rational. These books have a very important lesson to teach, and even though the characters may or may not learn that lesson, an observant reader should.
Another way of alluding to what’s going on here: experience has taught us to reason about plots and attempt unravel mysteries in fiction according to certain tropes. However what’s frequently true in fiction is often almost never to never true in real life. You will make more sense of these books if you come to the same conclusions from the scenes you read as you would were you to encounter those scenes in real life, rather than to the conclusions you would usually come to in a standard work of suspense fiction.
I remember thinking well of Angels and Demons. The Da Vinci Code, however, was, at every turn, horribly implausible. And Digital Fortress runs purely on Idiot Ball. The protagonist only distinguishes herself by being the person who carries the ball the least
EDIT: Also, Angels & Demons came up incidentally in a Facebook discussion between religion/English major friends of mine; Angels & Demons is nearly as jam-packed with completely false information as his other work. It turns out all of Dan Brown’s books are Dan Browned
Dan Brown’s books are thinly veiled nonfiction conspiracy theorizing, aren’t they? He really believes all this stuff. Maybe that’s what causes this effect?
Well, they are suspense novels so yes, there are bad guys in the plot; and yes they are conspiring to certain ends. But I am aware of no evidence that Brown really believes this stuff any more than Neal Stephenson, for example, believes his stories.
Here’s what surprised me about these books. Read them. Pay careful attention to what is actually described; i.e. not what the characters infer from the events of the book but what the characters actually see. You can reason from there in two ways:
1) Base your conclusions on traditional suspense novel tropes.
2) Base your conclusions on what you would likely think if you saw these admittedly implausible events in real life.
One approach will leave you confused. One will not.
I was speculating on the cause of this effect, not disputing it.
As for whether he believes in these conspiracies … well, I know for a fact that they’re based on real conspiracy theories with actual proponents, although I’m not sure where I heard that he believes them himself. I suppose he might be simply using them as inspiration; I’ll try and track down my source on that.
ETA: a moment’s quick googling reveals that
This may be what I was thinking of.