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Avg. Rating: 2.74
Umberto Eco? What were you smoking?
My God! What a waste! I wonder what the reviewer quoted on the back cover of this mammoth was smoking when the compared these guys to Umberto Eco. Must have been quite a high! Now to the book, straight and simple: Why didn't the authors focus on what is important and instead, give the reader so much baloney about Princeton and its pre-pubescent student characters? Instead of using Princeton University as a setting for the story, the authors turn the place into the novel's main character. The secrets of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, the excentricities of its author Francesco Colonna, the tribulations of Paul, the obsesive undergrad in search for meaning, are lost within a sea of inconsequential side-stories that annoyed the living daylights out of me. The reason I am giving this book two stars instead of one is because the story of the Hypnerotomachia is a worthy read. Besides, the book has a decent ending (if you're brave enough to actually get to it). The Rule of Four betrayed my expectations horrendously and quite frankly, wasted my time. After reading The Da Vinci Code, I read a list in The Economist magazine, listing this book as one of the top-ten fiction best sellers in Britain. I thought I would be getting a worthy follow-up to Dan Brown's best-seller and instead got a brick that I now use to kill cockroaches. The biggest problem with this book is its obsesive focus on Princeton and the inconsecuential stories, fixations and behaviors of the various student characters in it. Once the book starts to grab you around the Hypnerotomachia, the authors manage to constantly annoy you by diverging onto things that the reader could frankly do without. This list of oddities and diversions include, but are not limited to: Characters like Tom's girlfriend, Katie, who likes to discuss Camus and Thomas More in bed (that's right folks, Thomas More right before the act!); the deadly account of the Nude Olympics; the adolescent paintball wars in the undergroud steam tunnels under campus; the obsesive descriptions of the insides and outsides of the Ivy eating club; the naked buttocks of the Tiger Inn members. I can't believe I can actually list so many of these terrible wastes of my time! They made quite an impression, alright! I would not recommend you to buy this book. Instead, borrow it from someone like me who was already dumb enough to make the investment. Or pick it up from your nearest garbage bin.
No Way Near The DaVinci Code!
I purchased this book because it was tauted as The DaVinci Code for 2004. NOT! Where the DaVinci Code engaged the reader in the problem solving and code breaking, in The Rule of Four, the reader is spoon-fed the answers. I was very satisfied with the DaVinci Code, esp. when I would get the answers to the cyphers correct. I am so disappointed in The Rule of Four, that maybe I will just set it on fire too, though I doubt anyone would martyr themselves rescuing it...
Not the Da Vinci Code! But still good
Do not expect to read a nail biting thriller. The comparisons to the Da Vinci Code are very few. They both deal with a historical mystery, end of comparison. This is a good book though. It is worth a look if you have an open mind.
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