I refuse to read The Rule of Four any more than i have. It’s amateur dross riding off the coattails of the Da Vinci Code to exploit a market dredging the obscure and arcane for another pop culture, paint-by-numbers thriller. It’s not the dredging that I object to, but how lazily it’s executed.
The book that the Rule of Four authors hang their story around is Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. I haven’t been able to wrap my mind around it yet as it’s obtuse as hell. I don’t even know if it deserves to be rescued from the clutches of the half-assed efforts of those Ivy League boys.
It’s hard to embrace a book that keeps being hyped as having a nearly sexual obsession with architecture. It makes me think of that Dan Clowes ‘Eightball’ comic in which he rips on the creepiness of the old Harvey comics like Richie Rich and Caspar the Friendly Ghost, with one character that is sexually obsessed with octagons, and begins masturbating every time he sees a ‘Stop’ sign.
I have read “The Rule of Four” and I must say it is a great book. The only thing I am confused about is on wether there realy is a rule of four and if Paul and Tom were real people.
I read the Da Vinci Code and later on Angels and Demons, which I found even better. ‘The rule of four’ sucks and in quality is far below the Da Vinci Code. The pace of the story is very slow and lacks the “spannung” of a good thriller. To me it’s more a description of the life style of “Ivy League boys” rather than a thriller. Pardon me, it is supposed to be a thriller, isn’t it??
I’ve got to disagree. I just finished “The Rule of Four” this morning and was very impressed. I haven’t read “The DaVinci Code” yet (it’s sitting on my desk), but I’ve been told pretty much all of its plot by parents and friends. While I’m sure “The Rule of Four” has gotten an extra boost from DaVinci Code’s popularizing the genre of a historical mystery, it’s not the same plot by far. And the authors have been working on this plot since 1998 or so, well before Dan Brown’s book was out.
“The Rule of Four” is not a “paint-by-numbers thriller.” It has depth and layers and is well written. Good symbolism within the characters and plot itself–not just in the object of the story, the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. A hack couldn’t have written this.
Incidentally, I found two references to the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (got to prctice writing that, so I get the spelling right) in my 1968 copy of David Kahn’s invaluable reference, “The Codebreakers.” One is at the beginning of the chapter, “The Pathology of Cryptology,” which has an unintentional significance, if you’ve read “The Book of Four.” Kahn cites it as an example of a *real* case in which a historical book has a code buried within it (the first letters of the chapters spell out, “POLIAM FRATER FRANCISCUS COLUMNA PERMAVIT, ” thought to be a revelation of the anonymous author’s identity.
My recommendation? Don’t give up on “The Rule of Four.” It’s a great book in itself-don’t make the mistake of trying to put it into the context of other historical mysteries. Judge it on its own merits.
i almost picked it back up last week, to take a break from Landor’s Tower oddly enough. I will give it another chance one day. Unfortunately, i have yet another of these more literary mysteries lined up, The Third Translation. I couldn’t pass it up with the combination of my emloyee discount and the the regular discount for customers. With Adam Johnson writing blurbs for it, and an epigram lifted from Umberto Eco to introduce the book, it had the right way to sucker me in.
Actually tried to read the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili when we had it in the store, but i dunno. I’m too lazy to delve deeper.
Thanks for the tips though.
How disappointing! I bought into the conspiracy hype of the RULE that I so enjoyed in all of Dan Brown’s books. I’m half way throught the Rule of Four and am not going any further…. there is little sense of interesting adventure and I find the read boring and superfluous; nothing like the sense of anticipation created chapter after chapter in Brown’s books.
I’m up to page 90 in the Rule… The style of writing is very different to that of Dan Brown (which, even those who are not concpiracy orientated, cannot deny writes a thriller which runs at breakneck speed, dragging you along with it).
The Rule of Four seems to spend a great deal of time introducing us to numerous characters, to the detrement of the story. The characters are obviously important to the story but it is difficult to identify with them at this stage. I have found the book a little heavy going, although I live in hope of it “cutting to the chase” soon. Will add more when I eventually finish it.
I started to read The Rule of four and gave up on the first attempt.I started again and read it all and really enjoyed it!
I now want to read the actual Hypnerotomachia (well try to anyway)
Advice?..I agree with Tim..Dont give up on it and dont try and compare it with Dan Browns books,which I have also read and enjoyed(didnt feel like trekking round Paris or Rome though!!
I read the rule of Four after the Da Vinci code. I enjoyed both books, and I still fail to see how anyone can relate one book to the other. Its like relating Jazz to Opera.
As for the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili; I highly recommend reading it (at least twice). If you can sit through war and peace, you can read this from cover to cover without breaking into a sweat. Its a really enjoyable read, everything is recorded even down to the most minute and impossible detail.
As for “hidden” codes within the text (discounting the acrostic that everyone knows). Well you’ll have to learn Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Italian (amongst some other lesser known and equally esoteric languages first, and then experience early ciphers
I have to agree with “John”…you can’t relate two books written by two totally different people on two opposite subjects. I don’t pick up a book by Stephen King and expect it to compare to Shakespeare. I think that for a first book for these authors, it was a great attempt.
As far as it compares to it’s class of historical mysteries, I bet all of us who picked up the book went and searched for or about the Hyperotomachia and there for the book did accomplish something.
The Rule of Four is overall a poorly written book with little action or plot buildup throughout. I have read all four Dan Brown books, which I think are intersting reads, but once you have read one you pick up on his style and can literally figure out the conclusion of the book before it takes place. The Hypnerotomachia is a very interesting book for questioning the destruction of Renaissance paintings and texts, but The Rule of Four did not do it justice. The Ivy grads need to go back to to school to learn how to write a INTERESTING book.
I must say that i’m sad with all of you who don’t like the rule of four. no, it’s not by Dan Brown. The thing that is most aggrivating, is that you don’t understand it. Don’t even try the Hypnerotomachia, because you will just end up hurting yourselves. For those that have read it and enjoyed it, ask yourselves why you enjoyed it. Read it again. There is a lot more to it than plot, and text. Use the most powerful thing there is in this world…Inteligence. Once again, those that have not understood, you are indeed using the wrong muscles.
No. The problem is that i find it too much like Dan Brown.
No, you just think it is, because you think all books are the same. I bet you also think everything you eat tastes the same as well. Start using your inteligence.
learn to spell, Jeffy Weffy.
This book absolutely sucks. I read the da vinci code and that was entertaining if full of crap, but holy s$&% this book sucks. Its mind-numbingly slow, not the good slow like Steinbeck, just boring slow with god-awful character development, I couldnt give less a s&#* about any single character in the book, and holy crap, the story doesnt go anywhere, you read for so long about crap you dont care about and never get rewarded for it. This is not only crappy writing, its not even entertaining crappy writing.
it blows. it really, really blows.
i skimmed the last 100 pages because it was getting nauseous over the whole little undergrad romance subplot the book insisted in wallowing in. while the mechanism holds promise– a book as puzzle– the “mystery” itself isn’t compelling. nor are the puzzles themseleves at all accessible– they get solved for us by the nerdlings because no one in their right mind would give a rat’s ass about any of it.
there guys can write (i think) but have to get out of the “holy shit we’re writing a novel!” mindset they dwell in.
i thought da vinci sucked too but at least it was reasonably put together by a literary con artist who knew what he was doing. sure, we did too– that’s why we took the ride. but no one mistook it for anything memorable. these guys have clearly bought into the “but it is so much more than that!” attitude about their own work.
i’ve just started The Historian by Kostova and am feeling MUCH better.
Advice to RofFour guys– grow up, live live and only then give it another go.
I think the book is full of materials and the authors deliberately showed of how deep is their knowledge in history and literature. Apart from the code breaking process, there is not much to be excited about. The characters are not impressive. The wicked professor only became really wicked at the end of the story. There is no indication that he is a bad guy (save that there is suspicion for stealing a map). A wild guess could tell you who is the killer. Still, I think it is woth reading.
I think it’s good so far, I’m about 50 pages from the end… As for Dan Brown I have read 3 of his books (getting to the 4th soon). However, I see no reason to compare one thing to eachother, if you have just read Angels and Deamons, which IMHO has the fastest pace, The rule of four will seem slow, but hell try reading thru 800 pages of “Pillars Of The Earth” after reading a Dan Brown book, that will seem even slower… But that doesn’t mean it’s not a good book…
Thinking of reading the bible next, never found out what the hype was about in that book, and last I tried I put it down before getting to page 40
I can’t believe that anybody would really attempt to discredit Rule of Four by saying it “isn’t as good as the DaVinci Code”. Really?
The weak character development and cast of RoF doesn’t compare to the soul-shattering weakness of the Robert Langdon failure. Yes, the character motivations in RoF are far from stirring (“I’m doing this because it connects me to my dad……somehow.”) but trump Langdon’s motivations at every turn (“I’m a symbologist. It’s a word that Dan Brown made up to describe semioticists. My career is somehow intellectual because I teech @ collej, but I still get to have a suspenseful rock star aesthetic because everyone around me praises me as a genius and my skillzz are in demand. Also, I have no motivations to speak of except that, like other Intellektchuals, I am motivated by information.”)
Really, truly, to anybody that reads this, take my advice:
Do not assert that you like the Da Vinci Code, or Dan Brown at all, in front of other people. Not at all! It irreversibly marks you as an individual of low intelligence, or at least somebody who never quite understood what it was that makes some books better than others. Well, don’t mention it in front of INTELLIGENT or WELL-READ people, though. They’ll pin you for an idiot in no time, and I wouldn’t trust any of you DVC readers to recognize a person of genuine taste.
Also, “breakneck pacing” is another way to say that DVC contains many events but Dan Brown has few meaningful things to say about them, making the reading process feel “lightning quick”.
When did the relaxing, time passing, mind bending, intelligence increasing fun of reading become a bitchfest? Each book, whether good, bad, mediocre or mind blowing great, gives you something you never had before. An insight into something new. You cannot slate the authors of books for writing something you did’nt enjoy. Just chalk it up to different tastes and move on to something new. For everything you don’t like, there’s someone who loves it. Does’nt make them less intelligent. Just makes them different. Thats a good thing right? Get back to enjoying reading. Good, bad and everything inbetween.
Hi there! This blog post couldn’t be written much better! Looking through this article reminds me of my previous roommate! He constantly kept talking about this. I most certainly will send this information to him. Fairly certain he will have a great read. Thank you for sharing!