Nilesh Jasani's Reviews > Origin

I am going to have fun poking holes at all the so re-used, cheesy, tacky and movie-driven formulas deployed in the book. But remember that my rating is five stars and that's simply because of the big mystery and important, invaluable things one learns from it.

a. The worst of the DVC rip-offs are from Mr Brown himself. And this book is at the shameless extreme. Another loner killer (thankfully not an albino) from a sect thoroughly vilified. Another historic city with museums and churches to go through in one night with codes to be broken from Blake this time. A similar damsel in tow. The police and influential people playing their roles similar to those in the previous books amid all the set pieces. Coincidences and last-minute escapes are mirror images of many in DVC and its other "copies" (ie, the other Langdon novels).
b. The author is almost amateurish in the way he tries to build up the big suspense multiple times. He goes on and on for a few chapters in the first attempt even when he makes it almost fully known in advance that the secret was not coming out then. Towards the middle, the protagonists almost have the "key" and are required to re-start through a laughable "drop". The same stretched preamble is repeated again at the time of the revelation.
c. An irrelevant (possibly irreverent too) and purposeless royal family side-story is created to create an illusion of certain villains and to provide the protagonists with enormous resources like helicopters etc when needed.
d. One does not have to be a Sherlock to figure out almost as early as in the first third of the book who is going to turn out to be the master perpetrator.
e. And the way the book is written, one almost visualises Tom Hanks all the time.

Despite these big flaws, the story keeps the readers engaged. What makes the book extraordinary is the big secret at the end. For those who are not exposed to the increasingly extensive work on technology evolution, the author masterfully explains where the humanity is potentially headed. This section is well chosen as the core topic, as something the most important to humanity. The hypothesis on where we came from too is interesting.

For those who have read Kutzwell, Harari etc, the big revelation here will be a bit of a dud but the author has written a novel that will likely raise the singularity awareness far more than anybody else so far. It is also being imparted in the capsules coated by Hanks/DVC sequences.