The Rule of Four

Rating:
Summary: a great read, greater if you have appreciation...
Review: ... for historical facts and thought-provoking historical theories. Also a good read for people whose lives are consumed by certain things. The point of view is from Tom Sullivan's, who is very much like the Hypnerotomachia's protagonist (Poliphilo), who suffers the same love-strife dilemma in this enchanting novel. Princeton is dramatized and written off in a bucolic-classical manner. Very much like the manner of writing that the Hypnerotomachia had. Caution though with mystery novels such as this one. There will always be parts of an unrealistic nature. But what is a good fiction novel if it cannot take you to places far from the real? This is not Dan Brown. This is a unique novel for the unlocking of the Hypnerotomachia and the Rule of Four, also needs to be unlocked with the use of the Hypnerotomachia. I give this one the freshly picked laurels from the garden.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Read
Review: As others have pointed out, this is not The Da Vinci Code. The main character is a Princeton student whose father died trying to get to the bottom of a complex manuscript, Renaissance no less. More like Raiders of the Lost Ark than "Code" this book was a quick easy, and fun read, with the exception of a few intense names. However, I did think it was better written than "Code" and that the characters were well developed and well thought out. You decide. Highly recommended.

Also recommended: Good Grief by Lolly Winston, McCrae's BARK OF THE DOGWOOD, He Never Called Again by Rose Quintiliano

Rating:
Summary: similar but different than Da Vinci Code
Review: This suspense thriller compares favorably with "Da Vinci Code" and in some ways is better. it too involves a puzzle that becomes an obsession to solve, a code that needs to be cracked, in this case concerning an old medieval manuscript that holds the keys to a buried treasure. Four fictional Princeton students stick their noses into this real-life mystery and inevitably find their lives in danger as a result. In this intricately plotted, occasionally challenging and hard to follow tale, there are also pleasing subplots, including a love-story and glances into the academic life of young people.

David Rehak
author of "Love and Madness"

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing, could have been much better
Review: I love this type of book and went out to buy it immediately given the comparisons of it to Name of the Rose and Da Vinci Code. Unfortunately, the flaws in the execution of what could have been a fabulous plot left me very disappointed. The biggest problem with the book is that almost all the action takes place in one night and day, artificially limiting the setting to the Princeton campus and creating an unbelievable timeline. I kept stepping back from the book, thinking that it was impossible for all the action to take place in that time period (from steam tunnel escapades to black tie dances). The time frame also forced the writers to deal with too much of the plot development in flashback, weakening the suspense which might have been created by the timeline and creating confusion for me over what was happening and when. It didn't help that the characters all had simple (WASPish?) names like Bill which made them hard to tell apart.

Had the characters been more sympathetic or appealing, the writers might have been able to carry the book despite its problems. Indeed, some of them seemed created merely to move the plot along.

Some scenes, too, seem created because the writers self-indulgently thought them so cool that you as a reader would find them cool as well. For example, a good deal of action takes place in the pitch black of the steam tunnels beneath Princeton despite the obvious problems for the reader in following action in a maze in the dark. Perhaps two better writers might have been able to carry off this setting, but these two do not.

It's hard not to believe that hype (and Ivy League connections) haven't gotten this book farther than it would otherwise have gotten.

Rating:
Summary: Unspellable, but very good
Review: So this is a book about a book, in which students run around in under ground tunnels, while the book they are researching also contains under ground tunnels. There is a lot of this kind of symbolic parallelism between the story of the friends @ Princeton and the mysterious book they are trying to crack. I'm not sure I even got all the levels of parallels. Nevertheless, this was definitely worth my time. I'm tired of books that waste my time with lame prose and half baked ideas. Give me something to chew on! And this one did that. Thanks, Caldwell and Thomson, for some truth in advertising...

Rating:
Summary: Awesome!
Review: Just finished this, and boy was it worth it! Great writing AND a good plot. I didn't mind the Princeton parts, and I really liked the deciphering parts! Like others have said, its different than Davinci, but still a great read. The ending was also fantastic! Two thumbs up!!!

Rating:
Summary: It's a REAL book
Review: I just assumed (a word I rarely use) that the book that's talked about in THE RULE OF FOUR--"Hypnorotomachia" was made up, the way Dan Brown had made up some of his "facts" in DA VINCI CODE. Not so. HYPNOROTOMACHIA is a REAL book! I couldn't believe it! You can actually buy it and try figuring out what the four Princeton of the Apocolypse were attempting to get at. What a hoot! Aside from that, this book--THE RULE OF FOUR--is an excellent read (needless to say) and the authors have really done their homework when it comes to piecing together a page turner that's well researched but not stodgy. Kudos, guys. A great achievement. Also recommended: McCrae's BARK OF THE DOGWOOD.

Rating:
Summary: Intricately woven mystery
Review: Although it's popular to compare this novel to DaVinci Code, that's a cheesy flave-of-the-month cop-out, since the books are so vastly different in scope, plot, characterization, and most of all, mystery. A more apt comparison may be The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte, upon which the film The Ninth Gate was based. Here we have a love of the source material - ancient manuscripts - a bibliophile's dream combined in the fascinatingly wrought plot. It's an exciting read, filled with surprises, and when the final page is turned, ultimately far more satisfying than any pop-culture trash.

Rating:
Summary: BOR-ing
Review: What a snore. This book was such a bore that I gave up after 90 pages. There are too many other more interesting, better written books out there to read than this. Obviously, the publisher hit on the "brilliant" idea of selling this as the next Davinci Code. Might as well try that tactic because there's nothing else to recommend this--unless you're an insomniac looking for a sure-fire cure.

Rating:
Summary: Not an adventure novel.
Review: Caldwell and Thomason are very talented writers; their descriptions (of perhaps a few too many things) are very well-done, and you can visualize this group of college guys. I admit that I might have gone into this book with the wrong things in mind; I had read the Da Vinci Code (though it's his first book about Robert Langdon that I really liked) and then I read a review in a magazine saying this book was even better. You simply can't compare the two. To me, they fall into completely separate genres. The Rule of Four is very historical and research-oriented, with all the detail of a thesis, but it is NOT a thriller. I found myself occasionally bored by all of the descriptions, and particularly the paragraphs about the goings-on at Princeton. All the bits about things at Princeton might be interesting to someone who attended the school, but seems a little too much to me. The other part that bothered me was, well, I didn't particularly like the narrator, Tom Sullivan - his decisions, his actions, even some of his thoughts. I asked some people about this, and one of my friends suggested you weren't supposed to like him, but if I don't like the character, I don't usually want to read his story. Anyway, as I said, they're good writers, but don't go into this expecting a fast-paced, adventure novel. It puts out some interesting ideas about the Hypnerotomachia, but you pretty much just research it along with them.