#AmReading – Origin

Origin by Dan Brown (2017) – Robert Langdon is at it again! This time a friend and former student is killed as he about to make an announcement that will challenge the foundations of religion. With the beautiful fiancee of the future King of Spain at his side, he has to untangle the mysteries of the murder and the untold secret.

The Langdon series of books are what they are. Brown tells a taut story that moves briskly. His theology is suspect as is his history. And despite all of his protestations to the contrary, he seems to have a bug up his nose about the Roman Catholic church. Organized religion is ALWAYS villainized through the Church in Rome. While I have my own questions about both the history and doctrine of that branch of my own faith, the repeated pillorying of them grows tiresome.

So what do we have here? Robert Langdon is a super attractor for trouble. Not your common, every day “Oh dear, I’ve crashed my car” kinds of trouble, but the “world as we know it will come to an end” kinds of trouble. I wouldn’t let him within a country mile of me! Secret cabals lurk in every corner, dark powers within both church and state await the opportunity to drag the modern world back into previous age. It’s science versus religion, as always. With fanatics leading the way on both sides. And only a middle-aged Harvard professor who teaches an obscure and rather arcane subject can stop them.

And he does. Every darn time. In the company of a young and beautiful woman.

I mean, seriously. Come on.

Having said all that, I always enjoy the ride. Each book includes some number of incidents requiring a head shaken in wonder and disbelief. Ridiculous events, plot holes, and in this book, an absurd moment of a literal deus ex machina. But they’re fun. As readers and media consumers, we set aside our disbelief for superhero movies. I do the same here. In fact, I credit Brown for making me look things up. Any time I hit a “Wait, what?” moment, any time he mentions some interesting place in the world, I look them up. So I’m getting some fun fantasy storytelling and learning more about the world.

In “Origin”, the central question considered is threefold. Where do we come from, who are we now, and where are we going? Religion has offered answers for millennia, science has probed the first question and come up short. The second and third questions are points of discussion. Langdon’s former student, a tech visionary, very much in the Stephen Jobs mold, believes he has solved all three questions. At the grandiose and self-absorbed mega-event planned to reveal all, he is gunned down in front of millions of viewers worldwide. The rest of the story sits firmly in the Brown/Langdon template.

If you like this series so far, you’ll like this one as well.

Rating – *** Worth A Look