The book rides on the historical faction wave, which most people are introduced to by Dan Brown’s bestseller novels. The Rule of Four evolves around a book called the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, which means Poliphilo’s Struggle for Love in a Dream. It was printed and written in the fifteenth century—mainly in Latinate Italian, including phrases and words in Greek, Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew—not to mention extra-ordinarily many self-invented words. Many scholars believe that the book is full of riddles, and it is in this web of riddles that Caldwell and Thomason build their story. Other than the fact that the Hypnerotomachia is a real book, there is no assurance that the rest of The Rule of Four is factual, rather the opposite.
The main characters in the book are Paul, Charlie, Gil, and Tom (the main character)—four Princeton undergraduates in their ultimate year working on their respective theses. Tom is the son of a famous scholar who mainly researched the Hypnerotomachia, the book Paul is writing his thesis on. The dynamics between the two solving the riddles in then spiced with the killing of a school-mate, Tom’s ups and downs with his girl friend, and how Charlie and Gil are as friends. It is a page turner, but nothing ground breaking.
What I think is above the book’s own standard (although nothing like F. Scott Fitzgerald or his peers), is the description of the books characters—Tom, who hates doctors, because they lost his father after a car accident, describes his friend Charlie, who studies medicine: “He’s the strongman of the local ambulance squad, the go-to guy for tough cases, and he’ll find a twenty-fifth hour in any day to give people he’s never met a fighting chance to beat what he calls the Thief.” (p. 27 in the 2005 Arrow Books print) It has almost a chapter like that on each of the main characters, where the person is painted nicely, but with few really golden phrases.
All in all, if you have read The Da Vinci Code (which I haven’t), I am told that this is a book you will love. If you’re more into heavy or beautiful novels—or both (which I am) this will not meet your standards, in my opinion. However, I found it very relaxing, requiring almost no note-taking.
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