Friday, February 23, 2018

The Origin - Dan Brown

This is the latest book by Dan Brown. The book is about how the technology is impacting the behaviour of homo sapiens.

The book begins with a business tycoon and a technologist Edmond kirsch intending to declare to the world his latest research on future of human race and the past. He creates an intrigue by asking questions like "Where we came from and where we are going?" in media. He invites the world's renowned people in every industry for this announcement at a museum in Guggenheim, Bilbao.
Each guest is handed over a head set that gives the instructions through robots. Langdon is given with Winston who is also the personal assistant of Edmond. The guests are ushered to an artificially made  meadow like space. Just when the declaration is about to be made, he shot dead. Robert Longdon who is Edmond's mentor and friend is handed to task to find the killer and reveal to everyone what the technologist intended to say.

Langdon is accompanied with the museum curator Ambra Vidal -who is the fiance of the prince of Spain. There are special police forces trying to protect the curator when she is escaping with Langdon on every capture attempt. 

The killer is found to be ex naval officer who mistakes his killing assignment to the revenge of killings of his family members. Langdon finds the laboratory where his Edmond has the server on which Edmond's presentation is stored. With the help of Winston, Langdon succeeds in making the presentation public. The message in it being that we should embrace technology for the good will of our future generation against all the odds created by the religious institutions. Technology is going to occupy us and we eventually become techno sapiens.

Winston self deletes himself, Ambra finds peace with her prince and Langdon is up for the next adventure.

The book is definitely a page turner as usual. The depictions of cities of Bilbao, Gaudi, Barcelona are so fantastic that we feel like visiting them for real. Thanks to Dan Brown for always coming up with promising thrillers.