Posts Tagged: Director Ito

Writing — No Comments
19
Dec 09

Is She Guilty?

dan_brown_lost_symbolSo the architect has just come barging into room SBB 13, rescuing Robert Langdon. Of course, he could be a co-conspirator.

With regards to Director Ito, there are two possibilities. It seems rather obvious that she is part of the conspiracy. Why else would she have mysteriously shown up right after the severed hand appeared, already knowing about Mal’akh’s plot. Of course, this could just be a diversion, and we are supposed to think she is guilty. It in fact seems far too obvious to be true.

Which leads to possibility number two. She is not part of the conspiracy. Which means that the Director of the CIA’s ultra elite Office of Security is a complete imbecile.

Right now I’m leaning towards both being true.

Pages read: 168
Pages To Go: 341
Writing — No Comments
19
Dec 09

Waiting For Something To Happen

dan_brown_lost_symbolI’m 34 chapters in, and nothing much has happened. The Da Vinci Code started out much more exhilaratingly, with Langdon immediately being faced with the puzzle in the Louvre. As I recall, in Angels And Demons, we knew pretty early on that he needed to hurry, or the Vatican would be destroyed by a bomb.

But here we are almost 150 pages in, and there has been one, very simple puzzle, lots of random information about Washington D.C. iconography, a blatant attempt to make Director Ito seem a part of the conspiracy, and very little else. The tension all rests upon the fact that Robert Langdon has the secret package in his bag, and that Katherine doesn’t realize the doctor is an imposter, and planning to murder her.

Worst of all, the book is not as spectacularly bad as I was hoping for. It’s just dull. And I have four hundred pages to go. Curses!

Pages read: 144
Pages To Go: 365
Writing — No Comments
19
Dec 09

The Apotheosis Of Dan Brown

dan_brown_lost_symbolPerformed my second google search, for the Apotheosis of Washington, a painting on the ceiling of the Capitol, America’s version of the Sistene Chapel. Interesting stuff. Apotheosis is the transformation of a person into a God, and the ceiling of the U.S. Capitol depicts Washington ascending into heaven as a deity. Interesting implications both for the separation of church and state and our own Christian heritage.

The ongoing conversation between Ito and Langdon continues to grate. Moments after saying she has no time to waste, she allows Langdon to waste her time with a history lesson. We still have no idea why she is there or what is so important about her search for the perpetrator, so important that she has no interest in the severed hand discovered in the Capitol building or conducting a search for the man who left it there. How ironic that is the very man she is searching after.

Pages read: 84
Pages To Go: 425
Writing — No Comments
19
Dec 09

Director Ito, Why Don’t You Believe Him?

dan_brown_lost_symbol80 pages in, and the story is already beginning to unravel. Director Ito’s character makes no sense. She rushes to the scene of the crime, looking for Robert Langdon, but does not actually know about the crime. And no one thinks this is strange. No one asks for an explanation for why she is there, or why she seems completely uninterested in solving the crime. She mentions, for unknown reasons, that she is intent on helping the confessed perpetrator of the crime to find the portal. She challenges Langdon every step of the way.

Her character is functioning as an obstacle for Langdon to overcome, an obstacle formed by the very institution that is supposed to be helping. She is no different from a skeptical police chief or a by the book investigator who keeps impeding the protagonist. As an added bonus, the questioning of Langdon serves as a way to convey more information to the reader.

It is all so transparently inane. Is it so hard to come up with thoughtful characters and compelling story arcs? If Dan Brown were a masseuse, he would have ball-peen hammers for hands.

Pages read: 81
Pages To Go: 428

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