Dan Brown’s Origin Review – Well worth a read

Last summer I went on holiday and took with me a copy of Origin by Dan Brown to read whilst I enjoyed the sun. I’ll be honest and say that I haven’t read any of the previous books featuring protagonist Robert Langdon, but I have seen the movies and really enjoyed them. Although I had an idea of what sort of story to expect featuring the professor of Symbology, I wasn’t sure what Dan Brown’s writing style was like.

In all honesty, after reading Origin I felt slight regret at not having read the previous books, especially having already seen the movies and no longer having the chance to read them with unknowing eyes. As soon as I finished reading chapter one of Origin I was hooked, and I could not put the book down.

Origin is set in beautiful Spain where one of Langdon’s friends, a tech genius named Edmond Kirsch, is set to give a talk at the Guggenheim Museum at which he promises to reveal the secret to life, the universe and everything (no, the answer wasn’t 42!), and he promises the answer will make all of the world’s religions redundant.

Knowing the premise from the first chapter was what had me hooked as I was curious to know exactly what Edmond had discovered. Of course, without giving too much away, we are left in a predicament where Edmond could no longer answer that question *cough* he was assassinated * cough* and so Robert Langdon, and us, the readers, where left with a mystery that needed to be solved.

Teaming up with the future Queen of Spain, Ambra (who was at the Guggenheim Museum when Edmond Kirsch met his untimely death), and Edmond Kirsch’s AI assistant, Winston, Robert Langdon sets on a mission to find out who would assassinate his friend and find out what exactly he had discovered to make it worth killing for.

We are taken down many paths as to who exactly would kill Edmond before he could reveal his discovery, and with each chapter we delve deeper and deeper into a tangled web of conspiracies. I’ll admit, I was more curious about finding out what Edmond had discovered rather than who had killed him to keep it secret. If it’s something worth killing him for, it had to be something juicy, right?

I don’t want to give Edmond’s discovery away to anyone who hasn’t read the book, but what I will say is that in this day and age, what he discovered could very well be plausible and it’s scary to think that it’s a possibility.

Now that I have read the book I’m really hoping that it will be turned into a movie just so I can see it brought to life. If you are a reader of books and prefer them over movies, don’t do what I did with the previous books – make sure you read this first, but be warned, once you’ve picked this book up it maybe very difficult to put back down again.