Hope is not ‘Lost’ on Dan Brown’s latest novel

“The Lost Symbol”

Dan Brown

The Doubleday Publishing Group

A

Dan Brown wants you to… “The Lost Symbol”

Dan Brown

The Doubleday Publishing Group

A

Dan Brown wants you to skip all of your classes.

He also wants you to cancel plans with your friends, not return phone calls from your mom and spend some time apart from your significant other.

While he may or may not have actually admitted to these charges, he certainly implied as much by making “The Lost Symbol” so damn hard to put down.

“The Lost Symbol” rejoins Harvard Professor Robert Langdon, now stateside following his Bible-defying shenanigans depicted in Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code.”

Thinking that his days of code-breaking and secret society-revealing are behind him, Langdon suddenly finds himself in the middle of another doozy, this time in Washington D.C.

The story revolves around symbols hidden in plain sight throughout our nation’s capital and the incredible secret our Masonic forefathers were trying to pass on by placing them there.

The secret, which the book repeatedly promises is “very real,” could either enlighten mankind or be used against it, depending on whose hands it falls into. Langdon finds himself in the middle of a struggle between powerful forces, with the way we perceive the world as we know it in jeopardy. Again.

Despite its stylistic and plotline similarities to “The Da Vinci Code,” the book tells a new, unpredictable tale worth your time and money if you liked Brown’s previous work.

There’s no good spot in this book to take a break from reading. Every chapter ends with a cliffhanger, and most chapters are only a few pages long, making it too easy to read just one more.

But Brown uses even dirtier tricks to make you abandon your time management skills for the sake of his 528-page behemoth.

Using the same storytelling style as “The Da Vinci Code,” Brown juggles multiple plotlines simultaneously, forcing the reader to guess when — and how — they will collide with one another.

Brown alternates plotlines, compelling the reader to wait a chapter or two before relieving any given cliffhanger.

It’s like the TV show “24,” but with Freemasons. And character development.

“The Da Vinci Code” became a worldwide sensation much in part to its interpretation of the Vatican’s history in Europe. American readers may find this sequel much more relevant, as it focuses on the secrets behind our country’s landmarks and historic figures.

No one in the world can mesh fact, fiction and folklore the way Brown does, and it’s clear that he did his homework before writing this symbological sequel.