Inferno: Will this Dan Brown novel have some twists? Oh, I hope so.

Making fun of the writing in a Dan Brown book is kind of like shooting enormous fish in an unusually tiny barrel.

Or like shooting a stealthy Dan Brown

So I won't comment on how the heroine is "strangely attracted" to the hero who "in addition to his being handsome...seemed to possess a sincerely good heart." You know who people are strangely attracted to? Ozzy Osbourne in his current state. Or Paula Deen. THOSE are attractions where you look at yourself or the person saying it and go "....huh." If someone is handsome and nice, it's 'unstrangely attracted to.' Or just "attracted to." You don't need a qualifier. We get it.

I also won't comment on how the heroine is a beautiful genius who at one point says "He would never want me. I'm damaged." A DAMAGED BEAUTIFUL GENIUS WOMAN TELL ME MORE DAN BROWN.

Okay, so getting past those points, Inferno is completely normal Dan Brown. Robert Langdon awakes! Where is he! And then boom! PLUNGED into a perilous situation. This one has to do with Dante and Florence, then Venice, then other places THAT I WON'T GIVE AWAY BECAUSE OF PLOT REASONS. And the end of the world's being threatened, so using his art history degree or whatever, he and Beautiful Damaged Genius run around the cities of Europe, racing against Evil Antagonist's plot, but FORTUNATELY they're also not in too much of a rush to give us some art and architecture info on the way (albeit hurriedly).

Like that, but with Florentine art

Which is weird because Dan Brown books are all like "Secret society! What's going on! Only this handsome older symbologist who isn't Dan Brown at all can figure it out! Damaged younger female who's attracted to handsome symbologist but never in a sexually aggressive way! That one fanatical stalker character who's always there!--And now we turn into a travelogue for a while and yes, you can google pictures of the things we talk about and aren't you GLAD you know about the history of the Duomo now?--PLOT TWIST PLOT TWIST PLOT TWIST Robert Langdon sipping Scotch The End."

I don't really get the travelogue part, but I enjoy google imaging stuff and I do like travelogues, so it all works out in the end. Except when he gets too much like a non sequitur Wikipedia article:

the breed’s modern name, Friesian, was a tribute to their homeland of Friesland, the Dutch province that was the birthplace of the brilliant graphic artist M. C. Escher.

I was furiously anti-Dan Brown in college. The Da Vinci Code had just come out, and Facebook was in its infancy, so Favorite Books still had a prime place on your profile, and every sorority girl on campus had The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons listed. And that was it. Some would maybe be adventurous and add something like The Devil Wears Prada, but those two were ubiquitous and it enraged me, because I was 19. And an asssshole about it. To the point where I had a "Reading" and a "Not Reading" list posted on my profile, and the only things the latter contained were The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons. 

Then the books waned in popularity. I got older and cared less. And I read The Da Vinci Code and it was fine. I was entertained. Which is the PURPOSE OF DAN BROWN BOOKS. No one expects them to be works of art. The prose sucks and should really not even be called prose. Just "words." The words Dan Brown chooses suck. But that's why you skim and then you get taken on a rollicking adventure through Europe and are maybe given some questionable "facts," -- so make sure you google that shit -- and then there are tons of twists and it's all very exciting. Dan Brown: it'll relax your brain.

So many twists.