Inferno

A Novel

By: Dan Brown

Narrated by: Paul Michael

Length: 17 hrs and 12 mins

Publisher's summary

#1 WORLDWIDE BESTSELLER • Harvard professor of symbology Robert Langdon awakens in an Italian hospital, disoriented and with no recollection of the past thirty-six hours, including the origin of the macabre object hidden in his belongings.

“One hell of a good read.... As close as a book can come to a summertime cinematic blockbuster.” —USA Today

“A diverting thriller.” —Entertainment Weekly

With a relentless female assassin trailing them through Florence, he and his resourceful doctor, Sienna Brooks, are forced to flee.

Embarking on a harrowing journey, they must unravel a series of codes, which are the work of a brilliant scientist whose obsession with the end of the world is matched only by his passion for one of the most influential masterpieces ever written, Dante Alighieri's The Inferno.

Dan Brown has raised the bar yet again, combining classical Italian art, history, and literature with cutting-edge science in this captivating thriller.

©2013 Dan Brown (P)2013 Random House Audio

So good

I thought Paul Michael was perfect for this novel. Dan Brown impresses again. Can't wait to compare my imagination to the movie!

Loved it!

Another good Robert Langdon story. Not as good as the first few, but still a great book.

A gripping story well told !

This was my first audiobook , Inferno , and I enjoyed every moment of it . It was wonderful adventure .

Inferno

Great book! Dan Brown does it again.Inferno keeps you spelled bound though this entire book.

An enjoyable read

As a fan of Dan Brown I was looking forward to reading his next Robert Langdon novel and I was not disappointed by it. Filled ad naseum with references to medieval history, art history, genetic engineering and secret organizations, this book was an easy and enjoyable read for me. Any fan of Florence, Italy will enjoy returning to the familiar streets and sites as well. As with his other books, there are plenty of mysteries and riddles to solve, and Brown guides the reader along with the characters in a logical, natural process of discovery ... just in time to throw in a few twists and turn everything in on itself. Don't think you know the full picture of what's happening at any point in the book. As far as a book to keep the analytical mind active, this is a definite win. Michael's narration is solid and yet somehow less interesting in its even consistency. If you liked Brown's other books, you won't be disappointed.

another great work

loved the story and twists. might have to listen again as it was so crazy

A Plea for Genetic Engineering After All???

Warning--Some spoilers and a subjective POV to follow: This was a very enjoyable listen, and, while I am looking forward to the movie, am really glad to have heard the unabridged novel as the author wrote it. This is full of suspense, many plot twists that turn the world Brown creates, its characters, and what you think you know about them upside down (like Dante's underworld). Overall, I highly enjoyed this, but one thing does disturb me--there does seem to be an argument for genetic engineering as a shining promise and social good. This argument is made only toward the very end of the book, in the character of Sienna (Langdon and the WHO head are her audience for this impassioned speech), but I am always suspicious of arguments that tout the promise of technological interventions, the "natural" process by which humanity comes to possess the potential to make such interventions, and the conclusion that such interventions (selective engineering to increase human intelligence), lead to "progress." I would feel better if Langdon (in his self proclaimed role as the "old fashioned" thinker and/or Elizabeth had countered with questions about the sociocultural effects as indivisible from pure scientific rationalism. Even though earlier in the novel genetic engineering is brought up as an example of human hubris and (although it is not directly stated by any of Brown's characters, a late 19th -20th century example of a white supremacist agenda supported shamefully even by white feminists like Margaret Sanger), here Sienna's words hang in the ears of Brown's listeners unchallenged as a future "good" to work for. And, of course, 1/3 of the population has been genetically fixed and the bio-terrorist while doing something none of us would ever admit to being a good thing, is, in the closing dialog between Elizabeth, Sienna, and Robert, revealed to be a visionary after all (although none of them agree with his methods and he was driven to madness, he made the tough call). Words have power. Stories both reflect and shape culture. Brown's suspenseful, fun chase through Florence, Venice, and Istanbul, all the while rooting for our hero, the professor who can outsmart the villains and is an agent representing "our" perspectives and values is worth the read. I am left with a lingering uneasy feeling about Brown's ideology and willingness not to delve more deeply into the class-race-power issues that cannot be divorced from scientific and technological R&D and their applications. As Sienna earlier reminds us before she becomes the mouthpiece for engineering human brains, there is a dark history of weaponizing technologies for ideological agendas and a vector virus could be used to target specific ethnic populations for extermination, which is why she doesn't fully trust WHO and the CDC. She expresses this, Langdon convinces her to trust him and tell Elizabeth what she knows, and then, a few minutes later, Sienna gives an impassioned speech on the promise of genetic engineering. Not only does the character not fully track her at the end, the dangling argument left for the audience that social engineering is a product of "natural" human evolution, and an exciting idea, full of promise for a "better" world, makes me very uneasy. This may be a naive and rash thought--a momentary enthusiasm espoused by Sienna that does not really jive with her earlier worry about ethnic cleansing, but this oversight does not fit either Brown or his characters. The other possibility is it is an intentional didactic message in support of a wider "post human" vision for progress--the driving topic of this novel-- that finally, the claims of a "TRANShumanist" stance to achieve a "perfect" and "objective" vision is what we need to solve all the worlds pressing problems and preserve a future for us all. If so, Brown's final dialog among his all white cast of major characters suggest a kind of implicit agreement that science and what drives its practice is "above" conditions and ethical considerations of class, race, gender, ethnicity, how we define health and illness--that is, that these ideas arise in a pure realm where minds exist free from bodies and free from the pervasive influences of regimes of human dominance and oppression--the real human surround in which technologies are created and designed to respond to.

Wonderful

What did you love best about Inferno?

The story line was wonderful.

What did you like best about this story?

The twists and turns around every corner

Which character – as performed by Paul Michael – was your favorite?

Professor langdon

Any additional comments?

I really liked Paul Michael's voice. I could easily follow the characters in the book with his changes in his voice.

I was entertained

Overall pretty good. Great book if you just a want to switch off your brain and be entertained.

Mixed Feelings

There is one big glaring plot hole that's hard to ignore that makes for evident contradiction.