Robert Langdon is back, and this time, he’s in Prague to attend a lecture by Katherine Solomon, who is about to publish a book that will overturn everything we know about human consciousness. Of course, everything goes wrong, and Langdon and Solomon have to fight for their lives against strange villains and conspiracies. It’s the classic Dan Brown formula, and it works yet again—mostly.
First, the good. As always, Dan Brown does a wonderful job of bringing a city to life (in this case, Prague) by having his characters explore all sorts of nooks and crannies (and secrets). The central theme, related to consciousness, is intriguing (more on that below). There’s plenty of good action, thrilling chase scenes, and a few fantastic plot twists. And at the end of the book, there’s a great warning: “no part of this book may be used to train AI.”
More info on the central theme of consciousness (SPOILER ALERT!!!)
Here’s a brief summary of the claims in the book related to consciousness (again, MAJOR SPOILER WARNING!):
-
Consciousness is non-local. The brain doesn’t generate consciousness. Instead, consciousness exists somewhere “out there,” independent of neural tissue , and the brain is more like a receiver (like a radio) that filters consciousness to your particular “stream.” Since consciousness is not part of your body, it may also survive the death of your body (which, of course, connects to all the discourse on souls, ghosts, afterlife, reincarnation, and so on).
-
You can increase your awareness of consciousness. Normally, your brain filters out most streams of consciousness, limiting you to just one (your own), so you’re not overwhelmed by all the noise. However, by altering a chemical called GABA, you can make your brain more receptive, which allows you to perceive things outside your body. For example, you can hear other people’s thoughts, see things far away (“remote viewing”), and so on. The book also claims that GABA is affected by various normal conditions: for example, after an epileptic fit, you are more open and receptive to the world, and if you are close to dying, you may have an out-of-body experience, both due to changes in GABA.
-
Research backing these claims. The book tries to pull in research and experiments from the real world to back these claims. First, non-local consciousness falls under a real branch of science called noetics that has been around a long time (but is not widely accepted). Second, the US government (the CIA and US Army) funded the “Stargate Project” for 20 years, which tried to explore the idea of “remove viewing” (psychic perception) for intelligence purposes (the results were inconclusive and unreliable). Third, the book brings up the observer effect from quantum physics, where it is the act of observation (consciousness) that causes the wave function to collapse, implying consciousness is a fundamental force. Fourth, the book talks about studies that claimed physiological responses could precede completely random stimuli, implying precognition (but these results were never replicated and are considered questionable, at best).
Now for the not so good. As always, most of the scientific and historical claims are largely nonsense (that said, I’ll give Dan Brown credit for putting them together into a narrative that is both fun to read and discuss). The villain in this one (called “The Gollum”) is a bit of a caricature, made only worse by the fact that Dan Brown throws him in every couple chapters, has him briefly do a bad guy monologue, make about an inch of progress, and then abruptly cuts to other plot points (I found myself yelling “JUST DO SOMETHING ALREADY!”). The “puzzles” that Landon solves are simplistic and uninteresting. And while the end of the book features a great twist, it also features a bunch of seemingly unnecessary content after the climax, which causes the book to drag on longer than it should have.
It’s not a perfect book, but if you liked any of Dan Brown’s books, you’ll probably like this one too. I’ll say this much: despite the flaws, I looked forward to picking this book up every day, which is high praise indeed.
