Deception Point is another fast-paced thriller from Dan Brown, the man behind The Da Vinci Code.The United States of America is facing another Presidential election with two contrasting personalities – one President Zach Herney: A man of strong principles & a strong supporter of NASA and two Senator Sedgewick Sexton – a master of the political game with powerful friends.
Senator Sexton raises the funding of NASA as the main issue in his campaigning, as all of the recent NASA missions had been failures. On the other hand PODS, a NASA satellite, locates a meteorite buried deep under the Milne Ice Shelf, situated in an Arctic island. NASA scientists find out that this meteorite contains fossils of well-developed life forms – bugs.
As this proves beyond doubt that life exists elsewhere in the universe, it is going to be a turning point in the history of science.
The President invites four civilian scientists and the intelligence analyst Rachel Sexton to validate this NASA claim to give it high authenticity in front of the cynics. All of them hail the discovery as genuine and revolutionary. A festive atmosphere sets among the scientists gathered in the arctic island. The President is preparing to announce this startling discovery to the world in live media telecast.
However, someone spots a small discrepancy in the excavation site which leads to murder. Two of the scientists get murdered and Rachel Sexton, the beautiful and intelligent daughter of Senator Sexton, is fleeing for her life along with two scientists. Who is behind the killer-squad chasing them? What is wrong with the meteorite? Will Rachel ever find out the truth?
My Review:
Its another fast paced & thrilling novel for sure. There are some hitches with the novel – your are bound to know who is the villain after a few chapters. The narration is sometimes cryptic and exercises your brain muscles to visualize every scene – to the point that after a while, I gave up and started to concentrate only on how the characters are finding out the truth.
Bottom-line – do I recommend the Deception Point?
Of course! It is much better than Digital Fortress and is a good page-turner. No, don’t compare it with Dan Brown’s religious thrillers, but its standalone a very engrossing read.
Review:
Here’s another interesting video review of the book !
Art historian and symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to Europe to investigate the mysterious death of a scientist with ties to the Vatican. Something very valuable and dangerous is stolen, and several very important people go missing. The killer/thief/abductor threatens a disaster of Biblical proportions in revenge for a legendary atrocity committed by the Roman Catholic Church centuries ago against a shadowy organization of scientists and like-minded free-thinkers. Time is ticking away, and it’s up to our steely-eyed Harvard prof to solve the mystery and save the day.
Review:
The book takes place over a period of less than 24 hours and is pacy and action packed all the way through, the action moves from America, the CERN Complex in Switzerland to Rome and Vatican City. The book is easy to read and is very much a page turner.
This is of course one of those books where you have to forget about the realistic aspects of access to the Vatican, moving from America to Rome in a matter of a couple of hours (taking in Switzerland en route!) otherwise the plot wouldn’t work!
The way the story ends is quite a let down, the hero survives an action so implausible it breaks my willing suspension of disbelief. However I guess the appeal of Dan Brown’s books has never been his prowess to tie all loose ends. It’s always been Brown’s ability to churn out a believable mixture of fact and fiction using obscure pieces of information – information that ordinary people find interesting but can’t be bothered expending the effort to research.
Here is an interesting quote:
“For centuries… the church has stood by while science picked away at religion bit by bit. Debunking miracles. Training the mind to overcome the heart. Condemning religion as the opiate of the masses. They denounce God as a hallucination – a delusional crutch for those too weak to accept that life is meaningless. I could not stand back while science presumed to harness the power of God himself!….The day science substantiates God in a lab is the day people stop needing faith!”
I’d rate this at 3.75/5. Very entertaining and worth the time, for even the 509 pages won’t take you long!
Dan Brown really does a great job writing. It took me a while to get sucked in, I think it was because I had seen the movie soo many times that I was just not excited about the book. I stuck to it though and once I got into it I really liked the book better than the movie. Usually I read a book before I read the movie, I like to compare it that way. However, it was kinda fun to read the book after the movie this time. The book has a lot of differences, some small and some huge changes. I understand the reason some peices were left out, it would be a much longer movie otherwise. There was one big change that I liked better though – stop reading if you don’t want a spoiler – I liked that in the book Sophie’s brother lived instead of dying in the car crash. I liked how Dan Brown had the grandma raising the boy and he explained how the 2 grandparents were the ones Sophie saw in the “sex scene” when she snuck in on the Priory ceremony. It made much more sense to me than for her to be alone in the world at the end of the book. Also, at the end of the book she is hitting on Langdon and they set up a date – but in the movie it would have been better if she flirted with Langdon – I mean hello – she was left to carry on the bloodline.
Anyway, overall I really enjoyed the book once I got going into it. I’d certainly suggest it, but I still am torn whether I’d suggest reading the book first or seeing the movie first – you decide!
When the United States National Security Agency’s code-breaking machine (TRANSLTR) encounters a new and complex code—Digital Fortress—that it cannot break, Commander Trevor Strathmore calls in Susan Fletcher, their head cryptographer to crack it. She discovers that it was written by Ensei Tankado, a former NSA employee who became displeased with the NSA’s intrusion into people’s private lives.
What she discovers has the power to create the largest devastation in the history of U.S. intelligence. Betrayed by all and pitted against an ever-quickening clock, Fletcher finds herself battling to save the country she calls home… because when Digital Fortress goes live, every secret in the history of the United States goes public.
Review:
As usual, Dan Brown is brilliant and thorough! Your imagination is captured right at the start and it just explodes from there, until it got to the point where you just can’t put it down. Like in all his other books, Dan Brown includes interesting facts about random things, history, and the government. One drawback is that some aspects were guessable. For instance, the final part of finding the key to the Digital Fortess, was too simple. A reader can easily guess the answer. Even the villian was revealed quite early, but Dan Brown still managed to keep the thrill alive till the end!
Read it!
Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned unexpectedly to deliver an evening lecture in the U.S. Capitol Building. Within minutes of his arrival, however, the night takes a bizarre turn. A disturbing object–artfully encoded with five symbols–is discovered in the Capitol Building. Langdon recognizes the object as an ancient invitation . . . one meant to usher its recipient into a long-lost world of esoteric wisdom.
When Langdon’s beloved mentor, Peter Solomon–a prominent Mason and philanthropist–is brutally kidnapped, Langdon realizes his only hope of saving Peter is to accept this mystical invitation and follow wherever it leads him. Langdon is instantly plunged into a clandestine world of Masonic secrets, hidden history, and never-before-seen locations–all of which seem to be dragging him toward a single, inconceivable truth.
Review:
It sure was a page turner – fast paced, the content was really interesting, and the mysteries remained that way until the end. All this made it very difficult to put down but I’d rate this below all other Dan Brown works I’ve read. For starters, the first part of the book was a bit slow, so I did have a hard time getting into it. Also, some of the conversations between the characters are a bit unbelievable. When someone is in a time crunch to pass information on, they wouldn’t speak in code or wait until their companion figures it out themselves would they?.
Also, the book could have been a lot smaller than the 600 odd pages it is. Although I do remember that I’m not qualified to comment on Dan Brown’s literary technique, one thing I sure didn’t like – the chapters too are very small, making it a slightly rough read.
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GUYS if u luv science nd reading equally then these books are ones for the grabs...read them nd turn up with sumthin new on every next page...!!
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