The Lost Symbol

Dan Brown strikes again. If you liked his 'Da Vinci Code' you might like this one too. I wasn't a big fan of his 'Demons and Angels'. Coming at the back of his highly successful book, the second one was almost like a Hindi Bollywood movie in its climax. I was a little skeptical as I started this one hoping that it would be a bit like the 'Da Vinci Code'.

So let me say at the onset that 'The Lost Symbol' comes very close to the first book. It mathches the intrigue, the pace, the mystery and the page-turning ability of 'Da Vinci Code'. From the first few pages when the hand appears to the last one it is a definite page turner with the exception of a few pages in between. But then which book does not have a few slow moments?

The book has its regular characters to constitute a potboiler. The protagonist - Prof. Langdon; his partner and love interest - Katherine Solomon; the self-tattooed, self-inflicted, no-emotion, driven baddie - Mal'akh; the law enforcer who could be good or bad - Inoue Sato, Director of CIA's Office of Security and the commonly known locations of Washington along with Freemason's intriguing rituals and people.

In my view the central theme of the book seems to be - "One Word will set them free"! Mal'akh kidnaps Langdon's mentor - Peter Solomon and cunningly brings Langdon to Capitol building where he leaves Peter's dismembered hand pointing to the sky. From there on Mal'akh sets clues for Langdon to decipher if he wants to save his mentor. Peter Solomon is, of course, a Freemason of the highest order who is protector of secrets, the main among them being that somewhere is hidden a word or a thing that could reveal all the secrets of ancient powers and mysteries to the world. The premise being that visionaries like Galileo, Newton, Einstien and other pioneers have known and seen those secrets and fear that if the world gets to know them there could be chaos if the power gets in the wrong hands. Therein being the motivation for Mal'akh who knows this secret since he disguised himself to get into the highest order of Freemasons.

Mal'akh's leverage is a video tape he made of the Freemason's initiation ceremony that shows such acts as drinking blood-red wine from a human skull, taking part in an enactment of your own muder, hearing things like your tongue being cut if you reveal the secrets and so on - all seemingly barbaric acts. The idea is that these are all symbolic but if released can wreak havoc in the world since the highest order clearly shows key and important people from the administration as being part of the cult. So this video must not see the light of day. And so Langdon must dig deep into all his knowledge and understanding of ancient mysteries to unlock secrets and decipher codes.

'The Lost Symbol' takes us on a rollercoster ride from the Smithsonian Museum to the Capitol to the National Library of Congress to the Washington Monument with Langdon chasing Mal'akh and trying to save his mentor. In all this there is also the intruiguing science of Noetics that Katherine Solomon is working on which is the study of the untapped potential of the human mind with the central theme that when many people share a same thought that thought can have physical implications. So if all os us think that something good will happen, something good will. The HUGE thing for Katherine Solomon seems to be when she shows that a human soul exists!! But read the book for that scene.

The only disappointment of the book stems from the ending which is almost anti-climatic. Also if you have read enough mystery books you tend to get a feel of Mal'akh and his mystery towards the ending. I did. I managed to figure out who Mal'akh was before Dan Brown got to it.

If 'Da Vinci Code' changed Paris then 'The Lost Symbol' will make you look at Washington in a new Masonic light. Reading the book does make you wonder about the Freemason's and how much impact they had on the roots of American Constitution and political architecture. Why is the Capitol building designed along Roman lines? huh?

The book is 600 pages thick so its not a fast breezy read. But if you love mystery, intrigue and you want it all to be fast paced, this is the book for you. If you want to have a good time, not think too much and don't mind forgetting the book after a few months, pick this up and have a blast.

I would rate it 3.5/5!

Eros, Philia, Agape

Asimov set the entire basis for Robots with his Three Laws. He then wrote a brilliant piece of robot work called 'Bicentennial Man' where a Robot with an elastic brain realises that he wants to be free and sets about a path that takes him 200 years to realise that dream.

Rachel Swirsky writes a brilliant story about a family torn apart by one member leaving the family. As you read the story you empathize with both parties and feel the pain of the woman left behind to deal with the questions and queries of her young daughter. At its core 'Eros, Philia, Agape' is a love story dealing with the pain of growing apart. The only difference is that the 'male' member who has left is a robot in search of his identity.

Adriana is an upwardly mobile, successful woman living with her emerald macaw Fuoco, gifted by her father. The same father who sexually abused her in childhood - a fact that others in her family do not agree to. She hates her father but loves the bird as that is her only companion. Till one day she takes a drastic step and buys herself a robot with an elastic mind - a mind that can learn and change its personality based on what Adriana likes. With the entry of Lucian, Adriana finds love and companionship and secure enough to get a child of her own.

Lucian, Adriana and Rose are a regular family with a highly jealous bird as their pet. Fuoco cannot accept that Lucian is now closer to Adriana than he was and resorts to drastic acts of self mutilation till a stage is reached where he has to be put to rest. A chance statement by Adriana makes Lucain realise that he too is nothing but a toy for Adriana and hence starts his quest for self-identity. Little does he realise that Adirana really loves him but its too late. Lucian sets the wheels in motion and decides to leave.

The story takes you through the breathtaking emotions of betrayal, sadness and frustration that Adraiana feels as she loses touch with herself and realises the perils of life ahead without Lucian. Rachel also introduces you to Lucian's side of the story and his attempts at self realisation.

Set in about 90 pages the story takes you through a labyrinth of emotions and you wish for a happy ending.

You can read it here at http://www.tor.com/stories/2009/03/eros-philia-agape

I rate it 3/5.

My Man Jeeves

It would be presumptuous of me to write a review or a critic of P.G.Wodehouse. His writings have been revered by many and the tongue-in-cheek humor is something that authors aspire for even today.

Its an interesting thought that while I am a voracious reader of book, I never picked up a PG Wodehouse even though many of my friends are ardent fans of the author. It took an iPad and the free book for me to read the first Jeeves book.

'My Man Jeeves' is a collection of eight short stories introducing Bertie Wooster, an epitome of a rich feeble minded Englishman with too much money and time on his hands and his 'manservant' or butler Jeeves, the person whom he most depends on. While most of the stories focus on the interplay between Wooster and Jeeves the collection also introduces you to another character, Reggie who can be thought of as a prequel to Bertie Wooster but without Jeeves at his side. Needless to say the Wooster/Jeeves stories are what makes this collection a classic.

For a first time reader the writing introduces you to the English humor and Queen's English (I learnt quite a few new words in this book). As you read the simple stories you revel in the fact that you know what solution Jeeves will present to the problem at hand but you enjoy reading on how it is presented and accomplished. You wonder how Wooster did not think of the solution and realise that he does not need to when he has Jeeves around. You wonder at how Jeeves even decided on what dress Wooster looks good in and snigger when sometimes Wooster does not agree with the selection only to realise his folly later.

The stories are simple, brilliant, immensely enjoyable and with caustic humor built in. I enjoyed it so much that I bought a paid version of entire PG Wodehouse collection on my iPad.

Rating? Do I need to but its 4/5 only because I wanted all of them to be Wooster/Jeeves stories.

First Flight

I've recently got an iPad and the first thing I did was downloaded the iBooks application. Then I proceeded to search for free books that I could start reading. I love sci-fi and so that genre was my first stop.

I saw a four star rating for the short story 'First Fligh' and while I downloaded it I was skeptical about the rating given by others given that this is a free story. But I was pleasantly surprised. 'First Flight' is a 2010 Locus award winner and deserves the recognition. In a short span of 30 odd pages it captures the essence of a beautiful story with a clear beginning, a wonderful middle and an expected but refshing ending.

At it's essence 'First Flight' is a time travel story. Mary brings out the essence of time travel and deals with the complexities of this idea in a beautiful simplistic manner. No large quadratic equations and time travel morals here. It limits itself to the fact that you can travel only to the time that You have been alive and hence limits you automatically to your lifespan. A beautiful way to avoid you wanting to visit the Dinosaur age or bring back an Ugly Neandrethal kid that you might love.

So we have an old woman sent back in time to capture the historic third flight of the Wright brothers. The flight that stayed up in the air for over 18 mins and was the genesis of the idea that long distance air travel was possible. Of course the story can't be that simple and so we have the protagonist taliking to a boy and then disappearing on him. Therein lies the problem because you can't change history and so you have to go back to the exact time and explain the disappearance to the boy. The story deals with that conundrum while at the same time exposing one of the Wright brother to the advanced technology.

Does the boy understand the explanation of time travel given by a haggard old woman? Does the Wright brother accept the advanced technology? How does that impact the airplane thought? Mary deals beautifully with the thoughts and weaves history into mystery, nostalgia, maturity and benevolence to come up with a cracking Horton story.

I'm glad I downloaded this one and rate it 4/5 like a lot othes only because I would love to see this idea developed into a longer novel.

Here's to the iPad for this wonderful story.

One Amazing Thing

'Palace of Illusions' was a highly recommended book to me by the same author and I intended to pick that up. Alas, the book was out of stock but there was her latest output and I decided to read that one. So that's how 'One Amazing Thing' came to land in my lap.

I must admit that I was very intrigued by the cover summary of a group of people stuck in a near death situation reciting stories to each other to pass the time. And when it said that each story was about one amazing thing that had happened in their lives, I was hooked.

'One Amazing Thing' is a book about a group of people at the basement visa office of an Indian consulate all waiting for their interview. Each one of them has their own reasons to go to India and in essence that forms a core of the story. Why would a bitter middle aged American couple (Mrs and Mr. Pritchett), a Muslim American of Indian origin angry with the new America (Tariq), an African American (Cameron), a Chinese old woman (Jiang) with her grand daughter (Lily) want to go to India? The book is written from the perspective of a young Indian girl (Uma) who is returning to India to visit her parents. And then there is the Visa Officer (Mangalam) and the clerk (Malathi) on the verge of an extra-marital affair.

The author throws these interesting bunch of people in an earthquake hit basement, each with a secret of their own. Faced with the fact that they have no idea if they will be rescued or will die they start off on an aggressive note almost at each other's throat till Uma suggests that they tell each other a story to pass the time. The story should center around one amazing thing that happened in their lives. That forms the beginning of the thread.

'One Amazing Thing' could actually have been published as a collection of short stories. But by giving it a setting and a common view the author has very intelligently turned it into a small novel. Each story brings to life a facet of the human nature although not all stories are understandable or clearly bring out THE amazing thing in the story teller's life.

Mrs. Pritchett had tried to commit suicide when she comes up against a realisation that her married life does not have a kind of love that she wants - this after more than a decade of childless marriage. Really? Suicide? Wouldn't divorce be simpler? She wants to go to India to escape from her husband and be free!

Mr. Pritchett's life is about non-love. His mother was too tired from work and life to love him enough. His one love in life was a kitten that dies, maybe due to his carelessness. His only love is for numbers and maths and he is a successful accountant. He wants to go to India to bring the spark back in his wife's eyes and regain what was lost when she tried to commit suicide.

Tariq is upset with the new US where his father is taken away for no reason by the authorities after 9/11. Although he returns safely the trauma is too great and he suffers a stroke. Tariq is bitter and angry that he cannot call his own country - US - his own any more. His only silver lining is a girl who had come from India to spend a semester with them and has returned to India. He wants to go to India to meet her and maybe understand if he actually can relate to India. But he also has formed friendship with a group of people in US who are 'almost as close as brothers'. Are they terrorists? Will Tariq come back and become a terrorist? The author just leaves a morsel for us there.

Cameron is a failed example of his high ambitions. He wanted to escape the drudgery of his race and become a doctor. He was a very successful student and on track till he got waylaid by the love for a beautiful girl. She has small ambitions of working in a supermarket all her life and she thinks so does Cameron. When she gets pregnant Cameron asks her to get an abortion and is unable to sidetrack his original plans. He leaves her to join college but fate and karma have different things in store for him. He never becomes a doctor and while he becomes a soldier he is haunted by the loss of his 'unborn son' who he 'killed'. He adopts a girl in far flung India and hopes that by giving her a life, he will be absolved of his guilt. He wants to go to India in search of peace from his demons.

Mangalam is the result of living his life to fulfill the burden of high expectations. He manipulates his life to get married to a rich girl thinking that will solve his family's expectations of him but finds himself in a loveless marriage where he is a slave to his wife's desires. Lily's story is the most haunting one of talent, genius and living up to the high standards set by a sibling.

But the best stories of the lot are from Jiang and Malathi. Jiang's story is about grit and determination and finding love in the most impossible places. It is a story of a woman having to make her life in a man's world sometimes submissive, sometimes leading but always thinking beyond the horizon. In the hands of an Irving Wallace it would be a novel by itself. Malathi's story is more about courage and believing in something. She lives life by her set notions and dreams and does things to fulfill those dreams.

Uma, the protagonist, never gets to complete her story and we only get snippets into her life. The unfortunate part is that these pieces seem so disconnected that it feels as if it cannot belong to one person. There are many unanswered questions in the author's dealings with Uma and you feel as if she did not know which way to take Uma's story. In the end the most frustrating part is that all these questions are left unanswered. To me it felt as if one day the author could not write any further and just decided to end the book. It feels as if you have walked across a mountain to reach a beautiful place but you find yourself at the edge of a precipice with no land in sight.

I hate stories that do not tie their loose ends and this novel belongs to that category. Do they survive? Do they die? Is there a link between all of them? Do they learn anything from each other? No answers!

In the end it is a breezy read. I would recommend it for a short journey. You won't remember most of the stories after a few days but maybe what will stay with you is to make you remember if you have had an amazing experience in your life.

I rate this 3/5. Borrow and read it but maybe don't buy it!

The Girl who kicked the Hornet's Nest

Lisbeth Salander looks you straight in the eye from the cover of 'The Girl who kicked the Hornet's Nest' - the final chapter of Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy and that sums up the book, in a way. The final chapter is Lisbeth's story of redemption and justice for all that she has been through. Interestingly the covers of the three books tell their own story.

At the end of the second part we left Lisbeth having crawled out of her own grave where she was buried with bullet wounds in her shoulder, hip and head. She has just struck her mortal enemy, her father with an axe with an intent to kill and has just survived the attack from her half-brother the massive no-pain feeling giant with a pea brain. What a family! The final chapter picks up there with the murder charges being dropped against Lisbeth but she is now charged with intent to murder while she is increasingly upset that her father has survived. And this is where the intrigue begins.

Stieg Larsson builds an interesting story of drama, suspense and intrigue on a secret organisation within the Swedish Secret Police - The Section - who have conspired against Lisbeth with a psychiatrist so as to save their most valuable asset, the Russian defector Zalachenko. Stieg's intent is very clear in the book and you do know that by the end Lisbeth will walk free but he keeps you engrossed on the path to the obvious end.

This is a book more about Lisbeth's friends and their coming together to save her rather than Lisbeth's own antics and superwoman capabilities that we are used to. It is about the quintessential story of Good forces represented by Lisbeth's well wishers - Mikael Blomkvist and Armansky with some members of the police force, the Constitutional Protection force in Sapo and even the Prime Minister - against the Evil forces of The Section responsible for Zalachenko who have for years ensured that Lisbeth is silenced under the garb of socially incompetent status and hence relegated to the fringe of society and never taken seriously. Will good triumph over evil? Does Blomkvist's sister who agreed to be Lisbeth's attorney have any experience in civil justice cases to save her? Does she know how to?

The book has the undercurrent of how society ignores those who need our help the most, how society is afraid of the people that it does not understand and how society bases its knowledge on the words of a few people who appear to be experts. It is also a story of how corruption has the potential to spoil a person's entire life.

While it makes for great reading and Stieg intelligently introduces characters there are certain parts of the book that are completely redundant and were not needed. Removing them would have no impact on the pace of the book and just tend to end up adding unnecessary pages to an already long book - Erika's section about the Poison Pen, for instance. In that sense Larsson does fail in this book. The interesting bits are well woven but the pace is slower and the intrigue that you expect to be there does not come through completely. The court case is rudimentary and does not come till almost page 442 of the 600 page book and then too finishes pretty fast. One would expect some interesting intrigue and court room drama but that is missing. Stieg also seems to want to close all loop ends and focusses the last part of the book on Lisbeth's life after she wins the case. Frankly the interest level from the reader is low after the case is won and Lisbeth is free. At the end it leaves you wanting more.

The final part is a good story on how Lisbeth gets her due from society and how the system recognises its flaws. How individuals can make the system work for them to the detriment of others. How friends can do so much for you. It is a fitting end to the series.

I rate it 4/5 even though I would have wanted to see some more action, intrigue, drama and Lisbeth in the final part.

The Girl who Played with Fire

In the words of Randy Jackson from American Idol " Yo! Yo! Yo! Listen up y'all. Give it up for Lisbeth Salander". Those are the words that typically come to your mind as you read through the second edition of the Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy - The Girl who played with Fire.

Larsson tries to make this a stand alone book so that readers who have not read the first part can still enjoy the book. He takes his sweet time to re-establish the characters and give them some background. If you've read the first part it takes some patience to get through the first 215 pages of this book. You learn and re-learn some of the characters and get to know what has happened in their lives since the last one - mainly the two important ones, Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist. Both have gone their separate ways - Blomkvist with his publishing job & Salander with her millions that she's expertly siphoned off from Wenestrom.

The Girl who Played with Fire is at its core a prequel of who Salander is and why she is the way she is. Sex trade and the illegal smuggling of prostitutes from the erstwhile Russian states to Sweden and beyond forms the basis for the story. Millennium magazine is about to publish the works of the couple Dag Svensson & Mia Johansson. Mia is a doctorate student who has researched and written a thesis on the sex trade. Dag takes the thesis and develops it into a book that he wants Millennium to publish. Dag and Mia's research will clearly expose a whole slew of officials from the Swedish Police force to Security Police to Judges and the lot.

The book takes it regular explosive turn when Dag and Mia are brutally murdered in their apartment. The gun used for the killing is discovered with Lisbeth's fingerprints on it and she becomes the main suspect. But when a few days later the body of her guardian Nils Bjurman is also discovered murdered in a similar manner, Lisbeth Salander becomes the most wanted criminal across Sweden. Its easy to implicate her as well given her history of psychotic illness and documented declaration of incompetence by authorities. The book wanders through the next 150 pages as the police try to locate Lisbeth is what is an open-and-shut case. But we all know how difficult that would be.

When Lisbeth comes to the scene again, the books pace picks up considerably and becomes a page turner. But from here the book does become a bit predictable. Like every crime thriller there is a ghostly figure of a Godfather, in this case a figure called Zala that does not exist in any database but is feared by the sex trade punters and the exploited prostitutes as well. Then there is a 300-pound gorilla who is Zala's feet-on-the-street and who does not feel any pain. Larsson then takes the book on four parallel investigations - Lisbeth, who obviously wants to prove her innocence while running from the authorities; Mikael, who believes that Lisbeth is innocent and wants to find out who murdered his friends; Armansky, Lisbeth's employer who also believes in Lisbeth's innocence and of course the Police who want to apprehend Lisbeth and close the case. What the Police believe is a simple open-and-shut case becomes more and more complex as the investigation proceeds and the truth of Lisbeth emerges.

Larsson's writing is interesting as he moves from one investigation to another and links the story together. Unlike the first book, however, this one takes on a bit of liberty with the characters, especially that of Lisbeth. Larsson's inability seems to be to tie the climax together. If 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' had a climax that seemed to be hastily written, this book's climax almost makes Lisbeth superhuman. She takes a bullet to her shoulder and head, gets buried alive and still comes out to vanquish the villians. It is a bit too much to take and does come as a shocker. One wonders why Larsson needs to go into a super-hero mode for Lisbeth when he has already established her as an intelligent, smart thinking person. Then, of course, is the Star-Wars-Darth Vader-Luke Skywalker takeoff on Lisbeth and Zala.

The second edition does not tie in easily with the first one. Maybe that was the intent to make this a stand alone book while at the same time tenuously connected to the first one. Its a great crime thriller to read even if you haven't read the first one.

I rate it 4/5.

By now Lisbeth Salander is a spunky, small built, intelligent, psychotic, socially incompetent, computer hacker extraordinaire, super human heroine of the series. What is in store for Book 3?