Title: Origin

Author: Dan Brown

Pages: 670

Hi all,

I know I am jumping around in the Langdon series by Dan Brown. Unfortunately, the library is not well-accommodating to always have a copy in stock when you are done with book n. Looks like it is well-read at the moment?

However, the fortunate thing with this series is that you do not need to read the prior book/s to understand where this book is playing down.

Word also has it that this book may well also be made into a movie. The funny thing that I noted from this book are the following two things: 1) It is about how humanity is taking a next daring step, becoming more involved with artificial intelligence and 2) that the book notes that the Queen Elizabeth II has passed away. The book was brought to publication in 2017 and the timing of bringing out the film coincides very well.

But we have side-tracked long enough. Now, to the book review.

The book is broken down into a prologue, 105 chapters and an epilogue.

The book starts off with billionaire Edmond Kirsch making his way to a castle in Spain which serves as a home to various religions’ scholars. Here, he meets up with a high-ranking member of each of the three religious institutions: Catholic (bishop Valdespino), Jewish (Rabbi Yehuda Koves) and Islamic (Al-Allama Syed al-Fadl). He claims to have done found some answers to two questions that have probed our human minds since early times:

• Where do we come from?
• Where are we going?

He swears them to secrecy and then shows them his video of his findings. Afterwards, he informs them, that he plans to share this video with the rest of the world in a month’s time. They, however, are worried what this may do to the people of the world and therefore urge him to reconsider and have them have some further discussions in future. Little do they know that he plans to reveal the video in three days time. He will be hosting an exclusive event at the Bilbao Guggenheim Museum of Spain. In addition, he will live-stream the whole event.

One of the guests of the event is Robert Langdon. He was Edmond Kirsch’s professor at Harvard and wishes to share this moment with him, his favourite professor. After he graduated they remained in touch and frequently exchanged their view on different topics.

Hosting the event at Bilbao is the local TV personality Ambra Vidal. She has been recently engaged to the Spanish prince Julian and therefore managed to pull other celebrities to attend the event as well. Each of the guests is presented with a head-set that has someone speaking to them and giving them a personalized tour of the museum before the event commences.

• Langdon is told that the individual giving him his guided tour is actually not a paid student, but an artificial intelligence. One of Edmond’s creations. He was called Winston.

The event commences with a brief introductory video. Thereafter, after giving them all a taste of what is to come, Edmond finally makes his appearance on the stage. His gives his speech and is about to move to the main part of the event when he is suddenly shot down. The suspect flees and is being chased down by the personal guard of the Spanish household. Langdon and Ambra come to talking and foresee that they might not yet be in the green decide that they should flee since they may also have it out for her as well, since she is the future queen of Spain.

Not only that, but they wish to bring Edmond’s message to the world. It appears that he was silenced, but they feel it deserves knowing. They flee and head towards the private airport and board Edmond’s private airplane. This takes them to Barcelona where Edmond has last lived in the hope of finding his station of work that held all his research and saved files.

Unknowingly they are pursued by Edmond’s killer, Luis Avila. He initially had only been contracted to kill Edmond. However, his contract had been changed and now he needed to eliminate Langdon and Ambra as well, since they planned to locate and reveal Edmond’s message to the world. His contractor could not let them destroy the world they were in now.

The search in Edmond’s temporary home is the museum of famous local artist Antonio Gaudi. They don’t find what they are looking for. By now, the Spanish guard managed to locate them and brought them under their protection. They are supposed to fly to Madrid, but Ambra orders the flight to be redirected to a museum in Barcelona instead. One that holds a book from Edmond’s collection. In that book, they find the password they needed to give to the artificial intelligence.

Then they make their way to another location in Barcelona, the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre, where the artifical intelligence form Winston was waiting for them patiently. They make it and then provide the password to release the video to the world.

What is included in the video, that is something that you will have to read yourself :).

What I can reveal is that it was considered to kill for, in the story only of course.

Summary:

The book again allows the reader to be immersed in the adventure of uncovering puzzles and being chased down to prevent them from discovering another secret of the world. The book keeps you on your toes and definitely is interesting i.r.t. the time that we are living in right now. A rating of 4.15/5 will be allocated to the book.