When a thriller stops for a neuroscience seminar.
By: Maria Antokas
Oh, Dan. We need to talk.
The Secret of Secrets reads like a luxury sports car that keeps revving dramatically… and then just idles in the driveway. Dr. Robert Langdon is back (turtleneck probably pressed), this time in Prague with brilliant brainiac Dr. Katherine Solomon — his new love interest and resident consciousness expert. Prague, by the way, sounds stunning. Brown writes it so vividly I briefly considered pricing flights. If he ever quits thriller writing, he has a solid backup career in travel brochures.
The plot? Embassy drama, CIA shenanigans, murders, explosions, betrayals, puzzles — the usual Langdon buffet. There’s even a shadowy Prague entity called “The Golem” lurking around for added mystique. On paper, this should be electric. In reality, it’s surprisingly… simple. Formulaic. Like someone fed The Da Vinci Code into AI and hit “repeat, but longer.”
The central scandal revolves around a CIA experiment involving implanted chips and alleged human-drone development. (I think. There’s a lot of dense neuron-and-synapse gobbledygook that had me skipping paragraphs just to find something actually happening.) Instead of raising the stakes, the science lectures stall the momentum. It’s thriller foreplay with no payoff.
Honestly? This book could have ended 100 pages earlier and no one would’ve been harmed in the editing process. I’ve loved Brown’s earlier novels — they moved. This one puttered. And then ran out of gas.
Three stars for Prague. One star for pacing. Where was the editor on this mission?
The Bookaholic Blog 