The Lost Symbol ,Dan Brown
With The Da Vinci Code being incredibly successful, Dan Brown had to wonder how he could match or even top that success.The Lost Symbol,The book includes the requisite secret society, evil villain, and other assorted characters and leaves you guessing as to what that exact role of each is until the very end.
The Lost Symbol,Released on September 15, 2009, it is the third Brown novel to involve the character of Harvard University symbologist Robert Langdon, after 2000’s Angels & Demons and 2003’s The Da Vinci Code. It had a first printing of 6.5 million (5 million in North America, 1.5 million in the UK), the largest in its publisher’s history. On its first day the book sold one million in hardcover and e-book versions in the U.S., the U.K. and Canada, making it the fastest selling adult novel in history
The Lost Symbol Plot
The story takes place over a period of 12 hours in Washington, D.C., with a focus on Freemasonry. Langdon is summoned to give a lecture in National Statuary Hall at the United States Capitol, with the invitation apparently from his mentor, a 33rd degree Mason named Peter Solomon, who is the head of the Smithsonian Institution. However instead of an audience for his lecture, Langdon finds the severed right hand of Peter Solomon tattooed into a Hand of the Mysteries and pointing upwards, to the fresco The Apotheosis of Washington on the inside of the Capitol dome. Mal’akh has taken Peter hostage, and demands that Langdon unlock the Ancient Mysteries in return for Peter’s life. This leads to a game of cat and mouse throughout the museums and architecture of the city. Langdon joins forces with Solomon’s younger sister, Noetic scientist Dr. Katherine Solomon, while matching wits with Mal’akh, a tattooed, self-castrated and brilliant villain who is in search of an ancient source of power.[8] Langdon is also apprehended by Director Inoue Sato of the CIA Office of Security, who demands that he solve the mystery since it is a matter of national security, as the villain is planning to release a clandestine video of Washington powerbrokers engaged in secret Masonic rituals. The chase and the clues to the puzzles lead through the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Museum Support Center, the George Washington Masonic National Memorial, Freedom Plaza, the United States Botanical Garden, and Washington National Cathedral. Some ciphers in the book use magic squares such as those in the 1514 work Melencolia I, and an Order 8 Square created by Benjamin Franklin. Processes of alchemy are also described to reveal some of the clues.
In the climax in the altar room on the top floor of the Masonic headquarters House of the Temple, Mal’akh reveals that he is in fact Peter’s son Zachary. Unhappy with the way he was treated by his father, he faked his own death in a Turkish prison and experienced a religious epiphany, finding the need to learn the Word and complete his transformation into a godlike being. Trying to re-create the Biblical story of Abraham on the verge of sacrificing his son, Zachary tries to goad his father into killing him with a special sacrificial knife on the altar of the Freemasons. But Langdon intrudes and a CIA helicopter disables Zachary’s laptop with a targeted EMP pulse to prevent the distribution of the video. Mal’akh is fatally injured when the helicopter accidentally shatters a skylight above him and the falling shards pierce his body.
Peter then takes Langdon to the Washington Monument, saying that the Word that Mal’akh was seeking was actually in books such as the Bible,Torah, Koran, and Bhagavad Gita, and that the true Ancient Mystery is in fact the realization that people are not God’s subjects, but in fact possess the capability to be gods themselves. Once they realize this fact, they will open the gateway to a magnificent future.
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