Book Review: Inferno

On one fateful morning, I saw Dan Brown's Inferno displayed in the middle of a small bookshop. There was a spotlight from the heavens shining directly at the books, and a choir in the corner of the room singing Handel's Messiah, presumably for flabbergasted customers like myself. I took the book, hugged it, and started squealing and expressing my incredulity towards my boyfriend, who was trying to sedate me with a giant butterfly net and a syringe. I knew Dan Brown was writing a new book, but I didn't know what about, or when it was going to be published. The golden cursive on the front page reads Inferno, and I sighed. I haven't read Dante's Inferno, which is what the book will make reference to. For a split second I had the ridiculous idea of reading Dante's masterpiece. Then I realized that I have tried to do that several times but somehow my brain refused to soak up anything. So I prepped myself with the SparkNotes about Dante's Inferno before I started reading Dan Brown's. It's pretty captivating, actually. I read it in one go in 7 hours. Mainly because I was on an airplane and there weren't any good films. 

Lets get to it:

Spoiler Alert.

I love Dan Brown, I really do, in fact he is one of my favorite authors. I love his writing style, and his fast-paced storytelling. But when I found out it was going to be another Robert Langdon adventure, I grunted. I'm best buds with Langdon, but I know how the story was going to go down:

1. It's going to take place in Europe
2. Someone important is kidnapped or has been killed
3. Someone important needs his help to stop something from happening, and quick. Time is running out!
4. He's going to discover some ancient secret where the Catholic religion comes into play
5. He's going to have a beautiful and incredibly intelligent female companion who is coincidentally a big part of the mission, and he doesn't discover that until later
6. Car chases
7. There will be a lot of reference to Renaissance artists
8. There will be statues made in the 14th century that somehow points to exactly what Langdon is looking for
9. Langdon is going to have a near death experience
10. Relatively happy ending

That's why I prefer his two stand alone thrillers. Because it's more unpredictable and is less... historical. I can only take so much of Renaissance facts. They are interesting, but Dan Brown reads too much into it. He reminds me of my English essay when I had to close read a poem. I don't fucking know why the curtains are blue, maybe the author likes blue. Maybe the author is color blind. How the fuck should I know, Mr. Doug? 

In a nutshell, Langdon wakes up in a hospital in Florence, having no recollection of the past few days. He goes on with a beautiful intelligent woman, Sienna who helps him piece the puzzle. He discovers that the billionaire geneticist Bertrand Zobrist (who kills himself in the prologue) has invented a virus—no one knows exactly what—that would presumably kill the entire human population in an attack classified under bioterrorism. Langdon and Sienna run around Europe, picking up clues left by Zobrist that would lead to the weapon of destruction (sidenote: this isn't Blues Clues, Zobrist. If you don't want your plans ruined, don't leave your paw prints around). Possibly an airborne virus, which would travel fast and kill the human race in a matter of weeks. Zobrist isn't doing this for his own psychotic benefit. He wants to help the human race. Because the world is overpopulating, and at this rate, we will ruin the Earth and take everything she has to offer, to the point where humans can no longer survive. So to 'save' us, Zobrist wants to wipe out a few billion people. Because like the Black Plague that killed 1/3 of Europe, good follows bad. What happened after the Dark Ages? The Renaissance. The people flourished. The world does clean itself up to stabilize the population. With the Spanish flu, small pox, black plague, HIV, etc., but it's not cleaning up as fast as we're popping out babies. Like Machiavelli said, "When every province of the world so teems with inhabitants that they can neither subsist where they are nor remove themselves elsewhere...the world will purge itself." In the end, they find out that the virus has been released and the entire world has to live with the virus. Plot twist? It doesn't kill people. Instead, the virus has the ability to render the human body infertile. But it doesn't make everyone infertile, the virus will only activate 1/3 of the time, like the Black Plague that wiped out 1/3 of Europe. It is a vector virus that inserts a piece of predetermined DNA into that cell, essentially modifying the cell's genome. So for generations for the rest of eternity, 1/3 of the population will always be infertile, thus keeping the world at a stable population.

Aside from the predictability of Langdon's adventure, the concept is actually pretty interesting. It actually made me really think about the issue of overpopulation. I've never really considered it to be an issue because I have been blessed with an excellent life, so it's not like I need to participate in the hunger games to get a loaf of bread. But it really is an issue. It took the earth's population thousands of years (from the beginning to time to the 1800s) to reach one billion people. Then only about a hundred years to double the population to two billion in the 1920s. After that, it took a mere fifty years for the population to double again to four billion in the 1970s. And now we're on our way to reach eight billion. Zobrist believes that if you lower the population to 4 billion (the magic number at which humankind can hope to sustain itself indefinitely in relative comfort), you will decrease the worldwide epidemics and all the problems we face today. 

The book asks this question, "If you could throw a switch and randomly kill half the population on earth, would you do it? But what if you were told that if you didn’t throw that switch right now, the human race would be extinct in the next hundred years?"

I said yes, even if it meant I would die. My father did not agree with me. He said the world will purify itself with diseases and epidemics, it might take some time, but nature will take over. I started being very animated in the car, flailing my arms about like a mentally ill patient. "But the world isn't doing it fast enough! We're breeding like bunnies! We need to stop this!" I yelled out, suddenly becoming an advocate for a fictional character's lifelong dream. My father responded with, "yes but there are diseases like HIV and cancer that we don't have the cure for yet. If they find a cure or a vaccine for that, there will be new 'incurable' diseases."

This book will make you think, like really think about the world right now, and the survival of humankind. I give it a 7.9/10. Deduct marks for Dan Brown's predictable storyline, but a lot of marks for the self-reflection it made me do. 

"There is nothing simpler. If you want more available clean water per capita, you need fewer people on earth. If you want to decrease vehicle emissions, you need fewer drivers. If you want the oceans to replenish their fish, you need fewer people eating fish! Open your eyes! We are on the brink of the end of humanity, and our world leaders are sitting in boardrooms commissioning studies on solar power, recycling, and hybrid automobiles? How is it that you—a highly educated woman of science—don't see? Ozone depletion, lack of water, and pollution are not the disease—they are the symptoms. The disease is overpopulation. And unless we face world population head-on, we are doing nothing more than sticking a Band-Aid on a fast-growing cancerous tumor."