A review by paigedc
Origin by Dan Brown

3.0

Another reviewer wrote, “This book was better when it was called The Da Vinci Code” and I can’t help but agree. Powerful religious vs. scientific community conflict, Robert Langdon and a beautiful exotic woman working to uncover a secret while being pursued by bad guys, multiple characters moving within the shadows, a race against time, and complex questions about our past. Yep, sound just like his other book(s). But still, Dan Brown knows how to write a COMPULSIVELY readable story. Even at almost 500 pages, you just can’t stop turning pages.

Langdon resurfaces again, this time in Spain at the Guggenheim Museum. His former student and mentee Edmond Kirsch claims to have made a paradigm-shifting discovery about science and religion, but before Kirsch can make his presentation, things take a traumatic turn of events. Langdon and the museum’s director Ambra Vidal, who is linked to the crown prince of Spain, flee for their safety and to figure out how to discover and disseminate Edmond’s message to the masses. But news like this is unpopular, and those who wish to keep it silent also wish to silence Langdon and Ambra. The thriller takes them throughout Spain and through the ideas of humanity: where did we come from? Where are we going? How do we reconcile faith with the natural world around us?

Brown’s books often feature religion as a point of ridicule or a relic from a bygone era, and that can be difficult for me to read. In this story, Kirsch is a prominent atheist whose life’s mission is to promote the works of science to the detriment of mass religion. To that end, I take Brown’s books with a grain of salt and just for moderate entertainment value. His statements of FACT at the beginning of each of his books are also taken lightly for me. Still, for a quick speculative fiction thriller, he cranks them out like few others.