June 2, 2007
2 min. read
The Da Vinci Code was the first book of Dan Brown’s I read. It seemed like your only choice was to read the book, due to popularity. I really enjoy Brown’s style of writing, but didn’t like the far stretches required to make The Da Vinci Code a suspenseful novel and much of the false history. I guess it didn’t really bug me when reading the book. The thing that bugged me was people thinking it was the truth after reading a fictional novel. Despite this, when seeing Deception Point for sale at our United Way book sale at work, I decided to give it a try.
Deception Point involves the discovery of an astonishingly rare object buried deep in arctic ice in the far North. NASA, in dire need of a success to halt a funding cut or complete elimination of the organization, are careful to pull in civilian scientists to validate their discovery beyond a shadow of doubt. In addition, NSA analyst Rachel Sexton is brought in as a professional skeptic.
The incumbent President is loosing in the polls to Senator Sexton, Rachel’s father. Because there is no love lost between Rachel and her dad, it will be a powerful strike against Senator Sexton if his daughter verifies the accuracy of NASA’s find, an organization he wishes to eliminate. Unfortunate for Rachel and the civilian scientists, they discover some trickery in the scientific discovery. The question is if they can get away from the special forces assassins now tasked to kill them, before the world can be made aware of this scam.
The paperback is 557 pages long, but it was a rapid read. Brown’s prose is efficient. By that I mean he describes what is needed, but doesn’t fill the book with overly colorful and boring descriptions. I’m a firm believer that you can give a small description of characters and then use the story to flesh them out. Brown does this well, in contrast to a book I just put down yet again, because of the 50 pages of exposition in the start that I am still failing to get through.
As an Engineer, I enjoy some of the technical discussion in the book. I’m actually not sure what is real and what he made up. Don’t worry if you are not a technical person. It is all well explained and not detracting of the story at all. Even his made up details have a ring of truth to them, which was lacking at times in The Da Vinci Code.