Inferno by Dan Brown
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book follows the same pattern as Dan Brown's other Robert Langdon books: Robert Langdon has to solve some mystery and stop some bad guy, who loves to play scavenger hunt with old Christian artwork, who have hidden meanings, and for some reason, there's a time limit, there's a girl he has to explain everything to, and there's a betrayal. Robert Langdon wakes up in Florence, doesn't know how he got there, and people are trying to kill him. He has a mini projector that shows a painting, The Map of Hell, based on Dante's Divine Comedy, and from some changes in that, he goes off looking for more paintings and artworks. This book, he's accompanied by another beautiful girl, since he can't keep a relationship from the other books. This girl is Sienna, who supposedly has an IQ of 208, making her smarter than Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton, but she sure doesn't seem like it. Robert is always showing her up with his knowledge, and she basically follows him, figuring out a few things along the way but mostly serving as way for Robert to show how smart and awesome he is. Despite all Brown's talk in the Da Vinci Code about the sacred feminine and the Catholic church repressing females, his characters seem kind of misogynistic as well. The enemy of the book is a genius billionaire man who realizes the world is overpopulated and the population has to be reduced to 4 billion, or else we'll run out of resources and all die, and he decides to take manners into his own hands. He likes to quote the Divine Comedy, but the work itself doesn't really fit in with anything, just as imagery of people dying and suffering. It's not like the Da Vinci Code where the works of art supposedly suggest that Jesus had a wife and children, not that I really believe that's what Leonardo, who lived 1500 years after Christ, was trying to say. SPOILER ALERT: (view spoiler)[The whole scavenger hunt in Inferno is a total waste, as the plague had already been released and nothing Robert Langdon does has any effect on the plague, and the people he's running from are on his side. (hide spoiler)] Despite the thriller part of this book, which feels kind of forced, especially once the revelations at the end come in, it eventually disappoints, not really offering what I think is a realistic solution to the problem of overpopulation. In the end, these books feel like hyper fast tours of different musuems and artwork in a certain place, ie: France, Washington, and Italy. The plots and quests for knowledge feel forced and pointless after getting to the end, but the journey to the end is gripping and interesting, and there is some educational material, mixed with conspiracy theories. Fun, but not to be taken seriously.

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1984

1984 by George Orwell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Some people think that George Orwell got everything right, just missed the date by 30 years (that it should be 2014). I'm here to tell you that that is false and ridiculous. How could anyone ever believe that? First of all, this is complete science fiction. I mean, look at the technology in the book. It's all based on spying on you. There are TVs that look back at you. As if that were possible. (By the way, did you hear about the awesome Xbox One, where the Kinect can monitor your heartbeat, hands, and eyes? They say it needs to connect to the internet every 24 hours, as well, I guess for updates or things like that. Surely not to upload your data. We know we can trust this, because it's made by Microsoft, a good ol' American company.) In the book, there's also microphones everywhere, capturing your conversations. Lining the streets and country with microphones would be impossible, and would catch all the noise that wasn't wanted, like footsteps and crickets. If only people used devices to talk into, that would make recording conversations much easier. Now, aside from technology, it would be impossible for our government to ever be so corrupt and untransparent. There's no way we would listen to political messages that told us everything was ok, things were getting better, and try to indoctrinate us to their side. Plus, we have two political parties, they only had one. For us to revert to only one, the one in power would have to abuse that power to supress the other side. That would never happen. Orwell got it wrong in that he completely missed the internet, where we can speak out and do whatever we want anonymously, and no one would ever collect data on what we do with the internet in order to monitor conversations or try to sell us stuff. Nope, I know I'm safe with Facebook. And we all know that if we found out the government was spying on us, we would never tolerate it. For that to happen, some big event, a disaster, would have to strike terror in our hearts, and then maybe the government would step in, supposedly for our safety. But nothing like that has happened, nor will it, since we all love each other and everyone loves the United States. I hope you all realize that this book is obsolete and doesn't even deserve mention anymore, as Orwell got everything wrong. We all know our biggest threat is a Korean man who has nuclear missiles, and our government is doing everything they can to stop him.
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Fallen ebook

For any of you have been following my blog, you probably have noticed my short stories. Well, now they are available in one place, conveniently in ebook format (soon to come to kindle as well). It includes all the short stories on this blog, including the full version of Fallen (known as Apple on this site). The book also comes with the covers I’ve made, as well as the prologue for book one of Sage Eyes. Hope you enjoy, please support! Fallen and Other Short Stories, an Ebook by Matthew Barrett http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/325151