Bob Shacklock

The Lost Symbol is the third Dan Brown book about the character Robert Langdon. Dan Brown books seem to follow a pattern in the Style they are written. Because of this, if you enjoyed The Da Vinci Code you will probably enjoy The Lost Symbol. The chapters are short making it easy to read the book in small chunks one chapter at a time. What is lacking is the surprise of the other Robert Langdon stories. Many of the twist and surprises are predictable. The central focus in The Lost Symbol is Washington D.C. and The Masons. After finishing 1/4 of the book I had already figured out who the villain is and where The Lost Symbol was hidden. Many of the problems with this book are the same problems the movie versions of the last two Robert Langdon stories and I think that was Dan Brown's intention in order to make the book more movie script friendly. Even though I enjoyed The Lost Symbol, I only gave it three stars because I felt it could have been better if a movie version had not been thought about while writing the book.

I kept hearing so many good things about A Game of Thrones and with the new HBO series airing they hype was building up. I decided to read this epic fantasy masterpiece and very quickly got bored. One of the problems I had with the book is the amount of characters, there are way too many to really enjoy the story. The only character I even remotely cared about was Tyrion Lannister because he was the only one that actually felt real to me. Everyone else is stiff and before you get attached to them you are off to the next character. There is no real build up to anything thrilling until the end of the book and by that time I was just hoping for it to be over and done.

I am not a die hard fantasy reader and unless you are a die hard I don't think you will enjoy this book. I think if you invest the time to read the next few books in the series it might get better, but this first book was nothing more that a super huge introduction to the characters and the world they live in.

The Wind Through the Keyhole fits into the Dark Tower series between book four and five when Roland and his Ka-tet are forced to take shelter from a storm. While waiting the storm out Roland tells a tale from his past where he and Jamie DeCurry are sent to investigate some murders that involve a shape shifter called a skin-man. During this tale Roland tells the tale of “The Wind Through the Keyhole” to a scared child just as his mother did for him when he was a child. This addition to the Dark Tower series does not affect the story in the other seven books but instead adds a little insight to Roland's past and Midworld itself. Though not an essential story to the Dark Tower, it is a short fun read for any fan of the Dark Tower series and is also written well enough that readers do not need to read the first four books to enjoy it!