It was a perfectly fun book to read, and I have to admit that Inferno became my second favorite Robert Langdon book after the Da Vinci code. Why? Because it finally took a step forward, out of all the Illuminati crap, which, no matter how fascinating it is, can be tedious after a while.
Also, finally Dan Brown is starting to get a hang of his characters (as far as I know this is the first of his books where I actually care for the characters, and not just the action). It's still not perfect, but he's getting there.
And no, this character isn't Langdon at all - he's still the guy who suddenly shifted to the image of the boring old Tom Hanks, thanks to the movies (bleh). I actually liked all the other "main" characters in this one. Felicity (Love that name!) was pretty damn awesome, although the part where she came back struck me as a bit of a stupid move (I don't like it when a strong character suddenly turns all whiny) - I would have made sure that she was actually caught by Langdon or the police or something so we could get the needed answers.
Sinskey (for some reason, every time I saw that name, the first thing that came to mind was Stinky, not Sinskey...) reminded me of animé characters, to tell you the truth, especially her appearance.
And then there is Zobrist.
The best freaking "villain" ever.
But let me go back to the start.
As usual, the books starts off with a death (it wouldn't be a Brown book if it didn't), and then Langdon being sucked into something that's out of his league - but conveniently enough gets all kinds of clues to go just a bit further (first I really didn't understand why a genius like Zobrist would hide any clues about what he was planning to do, after all it would defeat all purposes, but then the end of the book revealed the answer to that, which had me pumping my fists in a "fuck yeah" motion).
Of course, I got sucked into the story, especially when it came to them ending up in Venice, since I visited the place and heard a couple of stories about it myself, so I actually figured out one or two things long before Langdon did - which was EPIC.
In case you were wondering what did I figure out - it was the doge palace thing, the severed horse heads and the bridge of sighs (I found it funny how Langdon remembers about the time he found out why the bridge got its name - it seemed so obvious to me when I was visiting Venice, with the whole part of the building being a prison there).
All right, what else is there to say about this?
Well, maybe the only thing left to talk about is how I actually think that Zobrist wasn't a villain at all. I thought that he was absolutely right from the first moment - in case someone would ask me if I would push down the switch that would kill half the population so the other half would live, I would definitely do it. It just seems logical.
I loved how the book ended - as in, that it didn't end with an obvious cure for everyone. This way I can actually imagine the virus doing its job (and I do hope that it did).
So, yeah, I absolutely think that it would be awesome to have something like that in RL. I might be a horrible person in your eyes, but still, I stand by it - it's pure logic.
So, yeah... I actually think that Zobrist is the hero in all of this, and just as he predicted, he would become a martyr. Go figure.
