There's a switch. If you throw it, half the people on Earth will die. If you don't, the human race will be extinct in a hundred years. What will you do?
Humanity's fundamental question is asked to all who are in denial that our time on earth might be numbered and it's coming to an end sooner than we can imagine!
Dan Brown is my favorite author in the modern world and there is no doubt he keeps on producing a nail-biting, fast-paced drama that takes us back to some of history's most chilling episodes that we might otherwise keep away from. And this time, he has us on our toes and makes us face the crucial realities of over-population and the burden it is to our mother nature and suggests that the Black Death might be one of nature's ways of punishing mankind's multitude of sins.
Poussin painted The Plague of Ashdod in 1630-31 (Credit: DEA / G DAGLI ORTI/ De Agostini via Getty Images)
With exquisite details, the novel entices us with its nonstop action thriller with Robert Landon and his lady accomplice - Dr. Sienna Brooks. They are running from assassins and armed soldiers, to find the location of a bioweapon, threatened to be released to the world by a master transhumanist and Dante fanatic, Bertrand Zobrist, who wants to curb the world from humankind’s biggest fear - extinction by over-population.
Their mission is to decipher an obscure Dante poem, re-engineered by Zobrist, that will reveal the location and the true nature of the deadly plague, which Zobrist created to reduce the population of Earth so that humans can achieve transhumanism before the probable apocalypse of time.
Bertrand Zobrist had boundless hope for humankind and believed we are living on the threshold of a glittering "posthuman" age - genetically enhanced species. However, he also understood that we'd not live long enough as a species to realize that possibility. So, he took matters into his own hands to save us from the brink of extinction and blamed the World Health Organization for stopping him from doing so. He aptly quotes the below line from Dante's poem to describe WHO's denial towards the perils of over-population and to do nothing about it!
The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.
- Dante Alighieri
I always seem to learn a great deal from reading Dan Brown's books and this novel explores the centuries-old poem - The Divine Comedy of Dante; Sandro Botticelli's Map of Hell; Vasari Mural and the magnificence of the gilded mouseion - Saint Mark's Basilica and Hagia Sofia.
The historical references of major artifacts are a literary feast for your senses. Dan Brown takes us through famous museums, old crypts, and celebrated tourist spots of Florence, Venice, and Istanbul, where Robert’s knowledge of symbolism; famous frescoes with their inconspicuous messages to the world; secret passages, and their historical significance enable the World Health Organization to unearth Zobrist's menacing ploy.
This book, without a doubt, is an absolutely phenomenal read and an eye-opener to the unprecedented situation that we are currently facing with the coronavirus pandemic, which could be another blatant reminder that one way or the other, nature always finds a way to keep the human population in check or we actually might be a species who is on the brink of collapse.
Imagine how different our world might be if more leaders took time to ponder the finality of death before racing off to war.
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