Angels & Demons Revisited Prologue – Chapter 3: Surprise! You Just Got Dan Brown’d

Wait, huh? This isn’t April Fools Day, and this isn’t another Fifty Shades recap. What’s going on here?

Well, folks, apropos of nothing other than my hyperactive and attention-deficit brain having too many ideas and no time management skills, I’ve decided to break up my breakdown of Fifty Shades with another series of recaps that I’ve been wanting to do for years now, ever since I was still semi-active on my now-defunct book blog: Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon books. AKA, The Da Vinci Code and the other ones with the same guy from The Da Vinci Code.

And why Dan Brown, you ask? Well, you might ask well ask me why E.L. James/Fifty Shades, to which my answer was, “because I felt like it,” plus it was also the 10-year anniversary back when I started those recaps, and I also had a specific bone to pick with those books at the time. I guess 2023 is also conveniently the 20-year anniversary of The Da Vinci Code (wow, that makes me feel old), even though I’m not actually starting with that one. But guys, I have to let you in on a little secret: back when I was a 14-year-old who was weirdly obsessed with stuff like Dracula (long story for another time) and had an utterly incomprehensible taste in reading material, I used to absolutely love these books. Well, I loved Angels & Demons and TDVC, anyway… I think by the time The Lost Symbol came out I was already slightly over it and even though I know I read it once I barely remember a thing about it, I never got around to reading the fourth book, and at this point I can’t even remember if the fifth book (there is a fifth one, right?) is the last Robert Langdon adventure or not. So, there’s a kind of nostalgia factor for me here; you can say I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Brown’s works, though in a much different way than I do with Fifty Shades since at least his books are entertaining and easily digestible reads that haven’t ignited a deep, smoldering rage in the marrow of my bones like the still-burning coal fires of Centralia over abuse apologia masquerading as romance the way that FSOG has.

But, I suppose if I wanted to rationalize my decision, I could say that judging from the type of fantasy novel I’m currently writing, I’m obviously a big fan of history, themes of academia in fiction, and a good “history mystery” conspiracy/thriller type of story. “Good” being the operative word there, and Brown’s books… well, let’s just say the quality of their storytelling is but one of the controversial aspects of these novels. Because let’s be honest, these books are chock full of nonsense and bullshit and WTFery… which is part of what made them like crack to me in the first place and kept me coming back to reread the first two well into my early twenties even after learning how inaccurate almost everything in them was. But at the same time, I must acknowledge that my 13/14 year-old self was an obnoxious know-it-all little shit who thought I was such an intellectual for reading these “educational” novels.

I will say this for Dan Brown; he’s honestly fairly decent at the craft of writing itself–except for when he can’t help but grind the story to a halt to give a bad history lecture, or his tendency to write faux-empowered women with a strict limit of one per book, or his villainous caricatures with evil plans that don’t make sense, or the persistent undercurrent of racism and ableism–and he’s much better at it than ELJ, so I suspect these recaps will be easier to get through for me than my Fifty Shades ones (I mean, I guess it also helps that I’m not forcing myself to read two books at the same time). What I do suspect will makes these recaps slow-going is pausing to do all the fact-checking that Dan Brown couldn’t be bothered with when he was actually writing this damn thing. And yes, I do understand that this is a work of fiction I’m dealing with, but Brown is so notorious for being confidently wrong about everything and passing his works off as meticulously researched and based in fact that he (at one time; it’s since been renamed to Falsely Advertised Accuracy) got a TV Trope named after him. And as an author who has been carefully researching the real historical figures and time periods featured in my fantasy WIP and is probably way more afraid than I should be of getting called out on the tiniest unintentional inaccuracy in my writing, I can’t help but find this false advertising and lack of care a bit insulting.

You know what these books are? They’re the Ancient Aliens of the literary world.

So, fuck it, let’s tear into Angels & Demons. Originally, I wanted to dive straight into The Da Vinci Code since it’s the more infamous sequel and also the one I read first, but I don’t think I can do it justice without sporking A&D first. Also, this one was my favorite out of the three Robert Langdon books I read back in the day, and let me tell you, things get pretty buckwild at times if memory serves. And in the spirit of meticulous fact-checking, I’m going to be starting a count in this recap for each instance of misinformation or blatant lying about history, science, or theology: RESEARCH IS HARD. Just keep in mind that I’m not a historian myself; I’m just a nerd with a habit of going down Wikipedia rabbit holes that eventually lead me to getting a bunch of emails saying “are you the L. [insert real last name] cited in this paper?” because I signed up for an academic paper site to download stuff for my writing research and it turns out I share a surname with a semi-famous Hungarian scientist.

We can’t jump into the story itself quite yet, though, because the first things Brown presents us with after the dedication are two short pages: one labeled “FACT” and the other a separate author’s note. FACT tells us that CERN “recently succeeded in producing the first particles of antimatter.” Doesn’t specify how recently as of the time A&D was published in May 2000, though; for the record, CERN did produce the first antihydrogen atoms in 1995, which was pretty recent… however, if we’re counting the artificial production of subatomic particles and not just full antiatoms, then the first antiprotons were produced in 1955, and the first antineutrons in 1956, both at UC Berkley. One sentence in and we’re off to a fabulous start with the shoddy research tally, and the story hasn’t even started yet.

RESEARCH IS HARD: 1

He also defines antimatter as “identical to physical matter except that it is composed of particles whose electric charges are opposite to those found in normal matter,” which isn’t technically wrong–if somewhat simplified from what I can gather–except that his use of the term “physical matter” should be the first red flag that we’re gonna be dealing with some shaky science here, because it implies that antimatter isn’t physical. Sir, all matter is physical, that’s what matter is (if any actual physicists want to correct me on this, please do). I won’t give this a point since it seems to be more of an issue of poor word choice than bad research, but oh boy, the rest of this page is a doozy:

Antimatter is the most powerful energy source known to man. It releases energy with 100 percent efficiency (nuclear fission is 1.5 percent efficient). […]

There is, however, one catch . . .

Antimatter is highly unstable. It ignites when it comes in contact with absolutely anything . . . even air. A single gram of antimatter contains the energy of a 20-kiloton nuclear bomb—the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Until recently antimatter has been created only in very small amounts (a few atoms at a time). But CERN has now broken ground on its new Antiproton Decelerator—an advanced antimatter production facility that promises to create antimatter in much larger quantities.

Sigh… *cracks knuckles*

I mean, yeah, I guess antimatter could theoretically be an efficient energy source… if you ignore how ludicrously inefficient it is to produce. We’re talking about what’s widely considered to be the most expensive substance in the world here, and as of the most recent sources I could find, humankind is far off from being able to make even close to a macroscopic amount of the stuff, let alone store it long-term or put it to any practical use (other than PET scans, which only use positrons aka “antielectrons”). Actually, why don’t we see what CERN itself has to say on the subject?

The inefficiency of antimatter production is enormous: you get only a tenth of a billion (10^-10) of the invested energy back. If we could assemble all the antimatter we’ve ever made at CERN and annihilate it with matter, we would have only enough energy to light a single electric light bulb for a few minutes.

From: https://angelsanddemons.web.cern.ch/faq/antimatter-to-create-energy.html

The efficiency of antimatter production and storage is very low. About 1 billion times more energy is required to make antimatter than is finally contained in its mass. Using E = mc², we find that 1 gram of antimatter contains:

0.001 kg x (300,000,000 m/s)² = 90,000 GJ = 25 million kWh

Taking into account the low production efficiency, it would need 25 million billion kWh to make one single gram! Even at a discount price for electric power, this would cost more than a million billion Euros!

From: https://angelsanddemons.web.cern.ch/antimatter/making-antimatter.html

He is at least correct about the amount of energy that would be released by the collision of 1g of antimatter with 1g of regular matter. So if a whole entire gram of it existed on planet Earth or could be produced before humanity manages to destroy itself by other means (unlikely), then sure, it would be pretty dangerous, though I’d still argue that describing it as “highly unstable” because it “ignites” upon contact with normal matter is misleading. The proper term (which will be used later in the book) for what happens is annihilation, meaning that when a particle of matter and a particle of antimatter bump uglies they destroy each other and their mass converts to pure energy, releasing it in the form of gamma rays. In other words, if antimatter could be produced in macroscopic quantities, then yes, the result would be a huge explosion of heat, light, and radiation, but Brown makes it sound like antimatter is inherently flammable or radioactive itself. So sure, you can say that there is a pretty big catch to harnessing the power of antimatter as a fuel source; it’s just not the one he’s making it out to be.

It also isn’t wrong that up until that point (and still to this day) only “very small amounts” had been produced by CERN, and that at the time he was writing this book CERN was still constructing their Antiproton Decelerator (it started operating in August 2000). Again, however, his description of the AD’s function is misleading; it’s only a part of their “antimatter production facility,” not the whole thing (although I guess it doesn’t help that CERN itself did call it an “antimatter factory” in that press release I just linked to), and does pretty much what it says on the box by slowing down antiprotons that are produced by a beam of protons that are fired into it from the Proton Synchrotron accelerator to then be used in experiments (which sometimes includes creating antihydrogen atoms).

Brown closes out FACT with the ominous stinger, “One question looms: Will this highly volatile substance save the world, or will it be used to create the most deadly weapon ever made?” because he obviously didn’t pay attention to anything I just said above. IDK, rising sea levels are probably gonna kill us all centuries before science can advance that far, so why worry about it?

RESEARCH IS HARD: 4 (One more for overhyping antimatter as an energy source, one for fearmongering about its potential to be weaponized, and half a point each for misleading descriptions of both antimatter and the AD.)

Look, Dan, I know physics is hard and makes no sense; I barely even understand what gravity is other than a terrifying movie that confirmed I was right for being the only kindergartener who didn’t want to be an astronaut. But this is page one of a novel featuring multiple characters who are supposed to be experts in the field of particle physics, and already I have zero faith in your ability to convince me that these people will have any idea what they’re talking about.

Finally, we can move onto the Author’s Note, which is short enough that I’ll just quote the whole thing here. And it should pretty much be self-explanatory at this point why Brown’s looseness with the truth is so egregious:

References to all works of art, tombs, tunnels, and architecture in Rome are entirely factual (as are their exact locations). They can still be seen today.

The brotherhood of the Illuminati is also factual.

Let’s just say for now that not all the references to the art and architecture of Rome in this book are entirely factual. And while yes, the Illuminati were an organization that did exist (we’ll talk more about them later), he’s kind of burying the lede here considering the absolutely bonkers, baseless things that will be presented to us about them as known facts. Not even some kind of conspiratorial “secret truth,” mind you (though naturally there is also plenty of that here), but just stuff that any professor worth their salt who studies the Illuminati for a living would know, and I’d wager more than half of it was pulled straight out of Dan Brown’s ass.

If he’d instead phrased it as, “The brotherhood of the Illuminati as depicted in this book is a creative blend of fact and fiction inspired by the real Enlightenment-era organization of the same name” that would’ve been perfectly fine; hell, it would’ve been fine if he hadn’t felt the need to bring up the “factuality” of the art references or depiction of the Illuminati here at all! But bring them up he did, so now I’m obligated to comment on it, since the vagueness and simplicity of the statement implies that you can trust that the author has done his research on the secret society at the heart of this story’s grand conspiracy. And in the year of our Lord 2023 I think we all know just how easily duped and ready to believe in conspiracy theories people can be, so falsely advertising a work of fiction as being grounded in facts can honestly be a dangerous thing, especially when we’re dealing with something so infamous and historically misrepresented as the Illuminati that it’s become a by-word for “secret organization that controls the world.”

RESEARCH IS HARD: 6

And now finally, finally, we can get on with the prologue, which is only just over half a page long. Get used to that; the reason why most of these recaps are likely going to cover multiple chapters is because a lot of them are two pages or less. I think someone forgot to tell Brown that you are allowed to have more than one scene or POV per chapter.

We begin in medias res, with a guy getting murdered as all books should. Why? Where? How? By whom? Unclear. What we do know is that our victim here is a physicist, and I’m guessing he didn’t realize that guests at the barbeque who don’t know the password to get in end up as the main course:

Physicist Leonardo Vetra smelled burning flesh, and he knew it was his own. He stared up in terror at the dark figure looming over him. “What do you want!”

“La chiave,” the raspy voice replied. “The password.”

“But . . . I don’t—”

The intruder pressed down again, grinding the white hot object deeper into Vetra’s chest. There was the hiss of broiling flesh.

Now, I’m not opposed on principle to the brevity of this opening scene or the suddenness of jumping straight into the killing; this is supposed to be a fast-paced murder mystery thriller, after all. But it’s a little hard to feel grounded in the scene when there are virtually no details at all about where we are or what’s happening apart from the soon-to-be dead guy’s name. The effect is more jarring than edge-of-your-seat intrigue, like part of the prologue is missing, though of course that could just be my own bias since I’ve already read the book and know the backstory to this murder-in-progress.

Plot twist: whatever it is that the killer is after that he needs the password for doesn’t actually have a password. He came prepared for that possibility, though:

[Vetra’s] only solace was in knowing his attacker would never obtain what he had come for. A moment later, however, the figure produced a blade and brought it to Vetra’s face. The blade hovered. Carefully. Surgically.

“For the love of God!” Vetra screamed. But it was too late.

I guess the killer knows how to use the Force, too? He’s quite adept at telepathic knife wielding…

Chapter one opens with a different guy having an entirely pointless ~*Symbolic Dream*~, which is ironic for a book whose plot relies so heavily on symbols and hidden meanings. Dan Brown himself also tends to utilize symbolism with a lack of subtlety approaching satirical levels:

High atop the steps of the Great Pyramid of Giza a young woman laughed and called down to him. “Robert, hurry up! I knew I should have married a younger man!” Her smile was magic.

He struggled to keep up, but his legs felt like stone. “Wait,” he begged. “Please . . .”

As he climbed, his vision began to blur. There was a thundering in his ears. I must reach her! But when he looked up again, the woman had disappeared. In her place stood an old man with rotting teeth. The man stared down, curling his lips into a lonely grimace. Then he let out a scream of anguish that resounded across the desert.

This is Robert Langdon, and as he wakes from uneasy dreams to find he’s been transformed into a giant insect I mean with a start (as all main characters must), he realizes his phone is ringing. He answers it and somehow manages to “[sit] up in his empty bed,” which is a pretty interesting and surprisingly subtle twist, making this a ghost story in which the the ghost is our main protagonist…

“This . . . is Robert Langdon.” He squinted at his digital clock. It was 5:18 A.M.

“I must see you immediately.”

“Who is this?”

“My name is Maximilian Kohler. I’m a discrete particle physicist.”

“A what?” Langdon could barely focus. “Are you sure you’ve got the right Langdon?”

“You’re a professor of religious iconology at Harvard University. You’ve written three books on symbology and—”

Okay, let’s pause here for a second to discuss just what the hell Professor Langdon’s job actually is, since considering how many times his field of study will be retconned in this very book I don’t think Brown even knows exactly what he does. Those of you who are familiar with the character of Robert Langdon from The Da Vinci Code or the movie adaptations will know him best as a “symbologist” or “professor of symbology,” but in Angels & Demons Brown apparently hadn’t figured out what to call him yet, so it keeps changing pretty much any time a character brings up his profession in this book. We’re introduced to him “as you know, Bob” style here as a professor of religious iconography, but prepare for that to change several times, and for that reason I’m starting another count:

CHAIR OF THE WHATEVER DEPARTMENT: 1

This will be for any time Langdon’s job title or alleged area of expertise changes, any inconsistencies in other characters’ job descriptions or expertise, or any time Brown doesn’t seem to understand what a person in a given position or field actually does.

While Brown hasn’t started calling Langdon a symbologist yet, we do get the first mention here of symbology, an entirely made up field that–depending on what the plot requires Langdon to be the world’s leading authority on at a given moment–seems to be a combination of art history, religious/occult studies, and a sprinkling of semiotics (Umberto Eco’s ghost says, “lmao”). Now, to be fair, I do understand the concept of interdisciplinary study, but I don’t think that’s quite what Brown is getting at here. What is supposed to be Langdon’s area of focus as an academic? Which department would he be part of at Harvard? Because they certainly don’t have a symbology program, and judging from what we’ll learn about his sphere of knowledge over the course of the novel, he doesn’t seem to mesh very well with the areas of focus covered by their School of Divinity or the other programs/departments I just linked to.

I’ll give Brown a pass on this for now, since he won’t start calling him a symbology professor until TDVC (at least as far as I remember) and the specifics of Langdon’s job as a member of the teaching faculty aren’t technically important since we don’t spend any of the book on the Harvard campus. What he does get a RESEARCH point for is his inability to give the reader a clear picture of what the hell his main character actually is and what his profession would actually entail. Which is kind of a major fail in a book where the protagonist’s profession is supposed to be integral to its plot and themes.

RESEARCH IS HARD: 7

Anyway, the mystery caller has something he needs to urgently show Langdon but can’t talk about over the phone, prompting Brown to try his hand at some wry humor with this, um, interesting anecdote:

A knowing groan escaped Langdon’s lips. This had happened before. One of the perils of writing books about religious symbology was the calls from religious zealots who wanted him to confirm their latest sign from God. Last month a stripper from Oklahoma had promised Langdon the best sex of his life if he would fly down and verify the authenticity of a cruciform that had magically appeared on her bed sheets. The Shroud of Tulsa, Langdon had called it.

Brown just breezes right past this without confirming if Langdon did take her up on the offer or if it was, in fact, the best sex of his life, so left to my own devices I’m just going to go with “yes” and “no.”

Mystery Caller claims to have gotten Langdon’s home phone number from the website of one of his books, but clearly he must be full of shit since his private number shouldn’t be on there. Besides, it’s oh-God-thirty in the morning and Langdon’s not hauling his cranky ass out of bed no matter how much the caller says he can pay him, so he hangs up. Alas, there’s no falling back to sleep for him now, and huh, it looks like Brown does actually know you’re allowed to have more than one scene per chapter, because after a section break Langdon’s up about. Mea culpa. He makes himself “his ritual insomnia remedy—a mug of steaming Nestlé’s Quik.” You can just say Nesquik, it’s fine.

OK, well, actually… while the brand name was officially changed from Nestle Quik to Nesquik in the US market in 1999 before the book was published, I’ll be nice and not give him a point for that since old habits die hard and it might not have been fully written/edited yet when the change happened. I’m a pedantic bitch, but not that much of a pedantic bitch (he still should’ve dropped the apostrophe s, though). However, I did still waste a good half hour trying (and failing) to confirm if most Americans colloquially referred to it as Nesquik in the 90s because I swear it was always called that unofficially, but I was also six years old when it officially changed and I don’t even remember if I drank it as a kid. So, hope you enjoyed this waste of a paragraph all because the words “Nestle’s Quik” looked so wrong and stilted to my eyeballs.

Langdon’s house, in case you were wondering, is a “Massachusetts Victorian” that “looked more like an anthropology museum than a home” according to his colleagues due to all the artifacts of world religions scattered around the place. I sure hope none of them ended up in his hands by any unethical or illegal means. This includes “a cycladic idol from the Aegean,” and I am feeling pedantic enough to ding this for Cycladic not being capitalized.

RESEARCH IS HARD: 8

The next four paragraphs are a rather long, info-dumpy description of Langdon. How should I describe the vibes here… he’s kind of the middle-aged white man equivalent of the “not like other girls” type, if that makes sense. Like Indiana Jones but uncool, which paradoxically somehow makes him cool, you know?

[…][His reflection] was distorted and pale . . . like a ghost. An aging ghost, he thought, cruelly reminded that his youthful spirit was living in a mortal shell.

Although not overly handsome in a classical sense, the forty-year-old Langdon had what his female colleagues referred to as an “erudite” appeal—[…] A varsity diver in prep school and college, Langdon still had the body of a swimmer, a toned, six-foot physique that he vigilantly maintained with fifty laps a day in the university pool.

Langdon’s friends had always viewed him as a bit of an enigma—a man caught between centuries. On weekends he could be seen lounging on the quad in blue jeans, discussing computer graphics or religious history with students; other times he could be spotted in his Harris tweed and paisley vest, photographed in the pages of upscale art magazines at museum openings where he had been asked to lecture.

Although a tough teacher and strict disciplinarian, Langdon was the first to embrace what he hailed as the “lost art of good clean fun.” […] His campus nickname—“The Dolphin”—was a reference both to his affable nature and his legendary ability to dive into a pool and outmaneuver the entire opposing squad in a water polo match.

Couple things:

1. “Youthful spirit in a mortal shell?” You better not keep this up, professor; I can only deal with one melodramatic weirdo on this blog at a time, and Christian Grey is already shaping up to be more than I can handle. Why do you think I needed to take a break from Fifty Shades for a bit to start recapping this? Also, shut up, you’re only 40 (yes, I know I said I felt old earlier when I’m only 30, but again, shut up).
2. Ah, my favorite annoying authorial self-insert trope: telling the reader that the MC totally isn’t conventionally attractive at all, then immediately assuring us that people are attracted to them and proceeding to list their conventionally attractive traits (in this case, “wisps of gray in his thick brown hair, probing blue eyes, an arrestingly deep voice, and the strong, carefree smile of a collegiate athlete.”). Granted, I am one to talk considering I can’t seem to help myself from inserting a lot of my own traits–both negative and positive–into my own characters, but like, so did Umberto Eco, and I don’t think there’s necessarily anything wrong with writing a quasi-wish fulfillment version of yourself into your novel. I just wish authors would tamp down the urge to be all like, “oh, they aren’t xyz, except for all the ways they totally are,” which is something that I’m trying to watch out for in my own writing.
3. None of what you just told me about Langdon paints a picture of him being “an enigma—a man caught between centuries.” He dresses casually and chats with students on weekends but also sometimes gets invited to lecture at fancy museum openings; sounds pretty par for the course for an allegedly world-renowned professor at an Ivy League school. The only “enigmatic” thing here is that absolutely dire sounding tweed-on-paisley fit (the 90s really were A Moment in fashion history).
4. Sadly, no one in this book will ever refer to Langdon as “The Dolphin.”

Langdon stares off into space for a bit (omg he just like me for real) until he gets a fax from Mystery Caller. He’s suddenly very awake when he sees that it’s a picture of a corpse with a spooky word branded on it that looks like this:

The image on the page was that of a human corpse. The body had been stripped naked, and its head had been twisted, facing completely backward. On the victim’s chest was a terrible burn. The man had been branded . . . imprinted with a single word. It was a word Langdon knew well. Very well. He stared at the ornate lettering in disbelief.

“Illuminati,” he stammered, his heart pounding. It can’t be . . .

In slow motion, afraid of what he was about to witness, Langdon rotated the fax 180 degrees. He looked at the word upside down.

[…]

“Illuminati,” he whispered.

Apparently it’s a big deal that it reads the same rotated upside down, though I have no idea why (and if you ask me, it reads more like “Hliuminali” anyway). Personally, I’d be making a bigger deal out of the fact that the dead prologue guy’s head had been rotated all the way around, but that’s just me. All I’m picturing is that one scene from season 3 of True Blood (if you know, you know), and I don’t know whether that or this is more disturbing.

So, Langdon picks up the phone again, and it’s onto chapter two! Mystery Caller does a poor job of not sounding suspicious:

“I tried to tell you before.” The voice was rigid, mechanical. “I’m a physicist. I run a research facility. We’ve had a murder. You saw the body.”

“How did you find me?” Langdon could barely focus. His mind was racing from the image on the fax.

“I already told you. The Worldwide Web. The site for your book, The Art of the Illuminati.”

[…]

“That page has no contact information,” Langdon challenged. “I’m certain of it.”

“I have people here at the lab very adept at extracting user information from the Web.”

Langdon was skeptical. “Sounds like your lab knows a lot about the Web.”

“We should,” the man fired back. “We invented it.”

Sounds like this guy and Christian Grey should swap stalker notes.

And again, more critical details withheld for mystery’s sake. I know this is supposed to be a suspenseful thriller, but come on, Dan, you’re not giving your protagonist any reason to trust this guy. But our Harvard professor here is starting to look like he has about as much common sense as Ana Steele, so of course curiosity gets the better of him so we can have a plot. After all, the spooky word “possibly represent[ed] the epigraphical find of the century, a decade of his research confirmed in a single symbol.” I mean, it could also be a forgery that proves nothing, but I guess the only way to find out is to get on the private plane being sent by the mysterious caller who just faxed you a photo of a mutilated corpse and fly to who-knows-where. Besides, the crime scene is apparently only an hour’s flight away, so he’ll have plenty of time to play detective and be back by tomorrow!

Chapter three is again less than a page; I could practically quote the whole thing here. The killer from the prologue is meeting with his mysterious employer in the “Medieval. Stone.” Chamber of Sinister Plotting. In case you were wondering if these two guys were up to no good, don’t worry, Brown doesn’t like to miss any opportunity to lay it on thick with the evil imagery; the boss is “seated in the shadows, out of sight,” and the killer has a voice “as hard as the rock walls” and his eyes “glistened, black like oil.” If at least one of these dudes doesn’t turn out to be a vampire, I’m gonna be disappointed (spoilers: I’m disappointed).

The killer assures his employer that “[…] there will be know doubt who is responsible” for… something (presumably Vetra’s murder in the prologue and the subsequent theft of whatever didn’t have a password). Then it’s gift exchange time:

[…] He produced a heavy electronic device and set it on the table.

The man in the shadows seemed pleased. “You have done well.”

“Serving the brotherhood is an honor,” the killer said.

“Phase two begins shortly. Get some rest. Tonight we change the world.”

And that is where I’ll leave it for now. This ended up taking me a lot longer than I thought it would since there’s already been a lot of fact-checking needed, most of it before the story even started. Hopefully, next time I’ll be able to dig into the actual meat of the book and it won’t be quite as dry. See you in chapter four!

Counts so far:

RESEARCH IS HARD: 8

CHAIR OF THE WHATEVER DEPARTMENT: 1

Table of Contents ~ Chapters 4-8