Rating: 
Summary: An over-hyped, supercilious disappointment to this reader
Review: How do these books get to be? Comparing this to the DaVinci Code is not only indefensible, it is sorrily misleading. It will be a long time bfore I believe in a Dial book again. PW should not have joined in the chorus, as this is a poor book, weakly written and about as suspenseful as -- maybe -- a new episode of Big Brother. The narrator has no grasp of self or reality. The roomies are each drawn as one dimensional simpletons, the codex itself ill illutstrated and read. The history re Savarnorola is so well known that for these alleged students to have to dig for it is laughable. Princeton must be a hopeless place, populated by egocentric goofballs who go off getting burned in steam tunnels (led, no less, by a brilliant black med student pledged to the preservation of health!). The eating clubs, the conflagrations,the absolutely dramaless murder reflect a level of incompetence overhwhelming in puffery and pedantic portrayal. Looking at the acknowledgements it would seem this book was written by a committee large enough to resource a major book of history, which this is not. And the idea that it would take six years to write is as improbable as the motivations, behavior and denouement of this silly book. If you had a category for NO STARS that would have been awarded. A big disappointment
Rating: 
Summary: Murder and Mayhem at Princeton
Review: Most people who take up this book will have heard that the plot centres round a mysterious medieval manuscript, a group of four college buddies, and a great deal of murder and mayhem. There is code-breaking, symbolism, conspiracy and betrayal. Of course there are shades of Dan Brown, with more than a cursory nod to that populariser of the historical mystery, Umberto Eco, and his ur-text, "The Name of the Rose." But what may be less well known is that "The Rule of Four," is also a novel about the nature of friendship and the process of coming of age. It's a campus novel with (I bet) some autobiographical touches thrown in. Along with the influences mentioned above, I would definitely add Donna Tartt's "The Secret History." So if you're looking for a good summer read that's not too demanding, reasonably well written and has a good plot to commend it, you cannot go wrong with this book. However, if you do happen to read it, would you be good enough to explain what the title means?!!
Rating: 
Summary: Affected writing, and overdose of Princeton
Review: Synopsys:Story revolves around the lives of four undergrads in their final year at Princeton University. Two of them are trying to interpret a 15th century text, Paul for his thesis and Tom to carry on the work started by his dead father. The text is composed of numerous riddles based on renaissance literature that are solved as the plot progresses. Positive: The basic premise of solving ancient puzzles to arrive at an unknown treasure hasn't worn its welcome ... yet. Negative: Far too detailed, often irrelevant, descriptions of Princeton buiildings, life, and traditions. I found them boring. The puzzles and riddles that are the highlight of this book are seldom worked through interactively for the reader's benefit. Typically, the brainy character (Paul) solves them on his own time and then launches into dull descriptions of what the encrypted text reveals when the solution is used as a cipher. In this respect "The Da Vinci Code" is far superior. The writing is often too pretentious, the kind with words from an SAT list and frequent metaphors for life and love. Example: "The butt of every triangle becomes the heart of another, until the roof of reality is a tessellation of love affairs. Taken together, they have the pattern of netting; and behind them, I think, is Love."
Rating:
Summary: No Way Near The DaVinci Code!
Review: I purchased this book because it was tauted as The DaVinci Code for 2004. NOT! Where the DaVinci Code engaged the reader in the problem solving and code breaking, in The Rule of Four, the reader is spoon-fed the answers. I was very satisfied with the DaVinci Code, esp. when I would get the answers to the cyphers correct. I am so disappointed in The Rule of Four, that maybe I will just set it on fire too, though I doubt anyone would martyr themselves rescuing it...
Rating: 
Summary: Strong plot, weak characters
Review: These two young writers are clearly very intelligent and well-read, and they have developed a story that is exceptionally intriguing and has a worthy pay-off. Their explanation of the Hypnerotomachia, at least to the lay person, is believable and satisfying. I can't say that I was looking forward to reading about the Renaissance, and much of the mystery involves historical characters, theories, and beliefs, but I found the story well-paced and interesting throughout. Stylistically, they use the device of telling back-story in the past tense and the current story in the present tense, easily and nicely differentiating the time-frames. I remain somewhat skeptical that 20-year-olds could be as exceptionally well-versed in so many historical areas as these characters, which is necessary for the plot, but then again I did not attend an Ivy League school. Perhaps there are people like that, and perhaps the authors are those people. If so, that would likely explain my criticism of the book, which is that the characters are flat and the relationships are lifeless despite the authors' attempts to make them dynamic. Each character is little more than a caricature painted in broad strokes: the "nerd," the wealthy WASP, the intelligent, athletic, and exceptionally moral minority, the long-suffering girlfriend, etc. There was not a single surprising decision by anyone in the book, and the villains were easily identified within the first few chapters. Proctors are described as though they are thoughtless robots, determined yet easily outsmarted. The dialogue is flat and sometimes borders on the nonsensical (try reading some of the dialogue aloud; it's disjointed and confusing, and certainly not how real people talk). The authors realize that tension is necessary for character and story development, but they don't know how to create it. As it is, people come together and drift apart for no apparent reason; two of the main characters have a severe falling-out that is never explained in any meaningful way, while the protagonist and his girlfriend wax and wane with little explanation for why they even bother with each other. Similarly, they do a very poor job providing a sense of location or describing surroundings. The timeline remains confusing throughout, with too much happening in too short a timeframe. For example, I found myself reviewing sections I had just read to see if the characters had really decided to play a game of tag, made preparations for it, arrived at the location, played for a while, got away from proctors by running around in the nude, got a new change of clothes, gone to a museum to admire art, and then attended a Friday night lecture (!), all in the space of about two hours. Perhaps the authors are big fans of "24." If one assumes that the main characters are based to some degree on the authors, one could imagine that they spent much more of their time trying to understand history than trying to understand people. I am amazed that they could explain a real, mysterious book in such a believable and satisfying manner; if only they could do the same for their characters. This is clearly a book that started with a great story, with everything else just being filler.
Rating:
Summary: Not the Da Vinci Code! But still good
Review: Do not expect to read a nail biting thriller. The comparisons to the Da Vinci Code are very few. They both deal with a historical mystery, end of comparison. This is a good book though. It is worth a look if you have an open mind.
Rating:
Summary: I wonder if the authors have met each other yet
Review: I got stuck at Brussels airport on Wednesday night, and due to insomnia on previous nights, I'd read everything I had taken with me. The bookstore had a truly dire selection and this appeared to be the least worst of a bad bunch.
It started reasonably, and I had nothing better to do so momentum took me through the first 300 pages or so, unfortunately, the interesting bits (which had to do with the "puzzles" - more later) became more and more infrequent and the boring nonsense about the "characters" and the dreary details of infantile pastimes at US colleges became more frequent.
I began to think that I was reading two separate books whose manuscripts had turned up at the publishers at the same time and accidentally been mixed up in the post room. By coincidence, the books had a few of the same character names (or else a good editor had fixed them), but other than that they had just enough in common to allow a messy concatenation.
One of these books, the "puzzle" book, is about 40 pages long and contains a series of puzzles which the author has not bothered to work out in detail (just how would you get a Latin word from a collection of Roman, Greek, hieroglyphic and so on, indeed why would an author with a command of these limit his words to those of a single language?), and besides there is absolutely no way that the reader could deduce the solution to the puzzles, they are simply revealed.
Surely it is of the essence of a puzzle mystery that the clues are there and the reader can, if alert enough, at least get somewhere near the answer (even the dreadful Dan Brown understands this, though his puzzles tend to be of the 'put very obvious key' in 'illuminated with flashing lights lock' type). It is as if a novel began with an undergraduate discovering an algorithm for finding prime numbers and factorisation, didn't tell anyone about it but used it to decrypt intercepted emails. The dull and mundane (decryption of emails) is far less interesting or surprising than the device which made it possible - an abiding mathematical problem. The puzzle book in 'The Rule of Four' fails completely in this respect.
The other book (about 480 pages long) is a truly turgid thing and would not have been published if it had been submitted alone. It is an extremely uninteresting account of some dull students at a dull college where there appears to be a fetish for pseudo-traditions. However, buying plaster copies of the gargoyles on Notre Dame and gluing them onto a mobile home does not make an historically interesting building, and so neither does reading about a few relics of ancient European universities and making up (for no good reason) a few "secret society" rituals make for anything worthy of more than derision.
However, the pointless additions to this mobile home of a novel (the Princeton one) don't finish there. For example, the narrator (whose voice floats in and out in a rather odd way as if the author could not sustain the first person viewpoint) has got a smashed up leg and limps, he also goes running in the morning, well that's not impossible, but probably warrants a bit of an explanation. Indeed this leg, which seems to be a key part of the plot, actually is an irrelevance, a piece of padding which is neither relevant nor a genuine red herring put there to confuse. It's just pointless.
Like the girlfriend, like the ball, like the man who is shot, like ... well just about everything really. From a plot which seemed to have momentum in the first few chapters (not much, I'll admit, but some) the last 150 are like swimming in quicksand.
The term `lacuna' springs to mind here, but it doesn't really do justice to the sheer pointlessness of most of the content of the book. If something is introduced, even for the purposes of misdirection, then it should have some relevance. None of these things do.
In summary, one of the authors may have the beginnings of a talent, the other should stick to flipping burgers. A good editor, a perusal of a few of Conan Doyle's works (even the short ones) or even some of Agatha Christie's would perhaps be a good start.
Rating:
Summary: Fun and Quick Read
Review: This was an interesting, imaginative, and, given the authors' ages, truly astounding piece of work. The language used was eloquent, and the plot definitely had me bound to it. The back stories, such as the way the main characters met, created credibility and reinforced key thematic elements. It wasn't just a story about some old book, but about virtues such as truth and friendship. I am definitely recommending this to others. My one complaint was that it wasn't long enough to really grab me- for those looking for a truly dense and absorbing mystery, I would recommend looking to Umberto Eco. This, however, makes an excellent, intelligent beach read.
Rating:
Summary: Father Fixation
Review: How anybody can call this book a "good read" is beyond me. The "My father this...." and "My father that...." repetitive sentences drove me to tears. IMHO this book is a poor 'first novel' and not worthy of the praise it has received.
Rating:
Summary: A first novel...
Review: You know how sometimes your boyfriend or brother will invite all of his old college buddies over for the evening? And how this leads, inevitably, to the enthusiastic re-telling of all their various college hijinks and quirky group traditions? And how eventually someone proclaims "Man, we were CRAZY!! Somebody should have written a book about us!!" And...how you smile politely and don't bother to explain that, much like the dream you had last night, these things are only truly interesting to the people who experienced them?
This book is much the same way. I suppose it's actually kind of a cute mistake on the authors' parts because it does show you how young they were when this was written. The fact that this book is hyped as a thriller/adventure/page turner leads to disappointment, because in reality it is a different, slower kind of story. I also sympathize with the fact that this book, which was a first novel and would usually have received little press, was thrust into the limelight with the success of The Da Vinci Code. I gave it three stars based on what it was - a first novel written by very young authors. Not a bad book, but adjust your expectations accordingly.
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