Inferno brings us many moral dilemmas. I have read Dante’s Inferno a few years ago and it isn’t a happy book – it isn’t meant to be. Brown uses the symbolism of that literature and paintings made afterwards as a background for this story. We see the same character, Professor Robert Langdon, who this time wakes up in a hospital bed not remembering how he got there.
Even if you don’t love Brown’s books, you have to admire the speed at which they read. You feel like you are running with the characters, either away from danger or toward the next clue. We are back in Europe for this hunt. I don’t want to give away too much as I thought the end of this story was quite brilliant. Are we overpopulating the earth? Are we going to go through the earth’s natural resources way faster than we should? By finding cures for horrid diseases such as cancer are we changing history? By looking at these things from a purely academic point of view the answers differ but all of us have a loved one who has gone through some awful illnesses, sometimes surviving but often not. We would never wish them to die just so there is one less person on the earth but that is not the case with the villain in this book. He is actually quite brilliant and yes in an evil genius sort of way. The hoops our protagonist has to jump through are ridiculous at times but it does make for a good read.
When I was about half way through this book I honestly had no idea where he was going to go with the ending. Agree or disagree it is very clever although you wouldn’t want someone actually carrying these things out. It is truly like playing God. I have to wonder how many of the world’s governments have already had their scientists working on some statistics about world population issues and what we need to do about the problems of perceived overpopulation. Scary thoughts indeed and Dan Brown does a fab job making us think about such.