Robert Langdon is back.

Dan Brown’s latest book, The Secret of Secrets was released a short while back and I was finally able to get my hand on the 670-odd page book and brave myself through the pages.

Ever since The Da Vinci Code, people have been waiting with bated breath for Dan Brown’s next offering. That itch was scratched rather beautifully when people discovered an earlier publication of his, Angels and Demons. Jumping from finding Jesus Christ’s long, lost descendant to uncovering a super-elite secret organisation that fought the Catholic Church was beyond people’s expectations.

Alas, the excitement has dropped considerably since then. Not gone, hell no — but dropped. Books like The Lost Symbol and Inferno, while doing very usual Dan Brown stuff, didn’t titillate the readers’ cravings like they usually did. There was the usual song and dance, sure. But it was not as mind-blowing as is expected from the Dan Brown stable. So much so that most people don’t even remember a book that came out in 2017, called Origins. The story didn’t do much, nothing remotely as scandalous or exceptional as his Catholic Church inquisitions.

And while we, the Dan Brown loyalists, held faith for his latest — The Secret of Secrets — the hype wasn’t where it should have been. Now that I have read through, I can safely say our fears were not completely misplaced.

The Secret of Secrets takes place in Prague, with Robert Langdon now back in a bit of a supporting character arc — as in, the main plot structure is built around his friend/love interest, Dr Katherine Solomon and her new book on noetic science. Only that there are people actively involved in working towards killing the book deal, destroying all manuscripts of the book available at the moment, and making sure that Dr Solomon forgets about her life-altering research and any hopes of future publication. At any cost, even death. The book starts off at a frantic pace, with the readers being pushed right into the middle of the storm from the get-go. Very, very Dan Brown. You are left gasping for air — as is Langdon — as inexplicable sequences of event start unfolding all around us. There are characters operating in the shadows, lies and deceit being flung around wantonly all around, and a much-cherished principal character trying his best to make some sense out of everything that’s happening around him — and also, to him.

However, in all that chaos and mayhem, as entertaining as it is, you still don’t manage to find the pulse of the entire narrative. As I said before, entertaining, but scattered. You don’t know the setting of what’s happening, Langdon himself doesn’t know the setting of what’s happening — and it rambles on for too long before we find our way through to some semblance of events. And even when the first act crisis is averted, you — and I can’t stress this enough, even Langdon — are still lost in the dark. Even with Dr Solomon right there, reunited with him.

Then begins the second act, as Dr Solomon tries to explain what her book is all about — and that’s when you remember that Dan Brown also has books like Digital Fortress and Deception Point. It’s never been only about religious exposes and conspiracy theories, he also deals with the world of science and cryptology. And here we come face to face with that side of Dan Brown. I can’t go through the entire complicated explanation of the unnecessarily lengthy reveal, but basically it deals with something that is impossible to quantify. There, I said it — that’s the issue with this book. As ridiculous and far-out as The Da Vinci Code might have been, as sensational and conspiratorial Angels and Demons might have been — they were quantifiable. This is the farthest thing away from it. And to make it worse, not only is it caught up in oodles of scientific terminology, the real issue is that it rambles on for too long to come to the point.

Specifying what the crux of this book is all about would be the ultimate level of spoiler mongering, — and you will have about 400-odd pages to get to that yourself — it might be something that we all would like to know more about. The fact is that we can’t. It doesn’t hold up to that level of OMG that we have become accustomed to with a Dan Brown book. While his first two books might not have been the potboilers his later books became, they had solid bones and structure. This one, sadly, doesn’t hold that same weight. At least not in my opinion.

At one point there’s a humorous jibe at the George Clooney film, The Men Who Stare at Goats. Sadly, the book feels like it’s running on a parallel track to that movie — only it’s not billed or structured as a comedy.

I must re-iterate, at no point am I trying to suggest that all of what was “revealed” in the book does not or will not exist. Maybe it does, maybe its all happening. It’s just that I couldn’t bring myself to care seriously about it. It didn’t get my curious juices running. It could perhaps have more to do with the copious amount of content than the quality and reality of it — that’s very, very possible. Dragging the entire book through 650+ pages was an overachievement of sorts. Several sections of the narrative could have been thoroughly edited, maybe even excluded (the entire NYC sub-plot with the editor, for one) — but that is an editorial decision at work. See how long this review has turned into? That’s what happened to the book.

After all of this is said and done, the writing itself was fun. More in the thriller bracket than a Dan Brown spectacle. But how can that be a legitimate issue, really. The product is good, even if not mind-numbingly great. Definitely could have been trimmed, definitely could have managed the page better — but it was fun to read, even if you were jumping over large portions of the parts that you really shouldn’t be wanting to skip. Brown has been going into the more cabal-type channels in his later books, which makes matters more campy than real. Far from the secret society joy that we have been used to with Brown. From Provosts to Golems. Campy!

Read the book. It’s fun. Don’t go into with stupendous Dan Brown expectations. True, it could be a “secret of secrets” — but you’ll never know. Not in a lifetime. And if the secret is revealed to you, it’ll be too late anyways.

We now begin to wait for the next Dan Brown book. Maybe it’ll be return to his usual scheme of things, maybe it won’t. But we’ll still wait. Over and over again.

It is what it is.