Book Review: The Rule of Four

Dubbed by The New York Times as "the ultimate puzzle book", many compares this book with well-known Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code. I disagree. Much.

I picked up this book at my friend's house, he was an avid reader, and doesn't share the hype everyone felt about Da Vinci Code with similar reason with me which is roughly translated as "i dont like Da Vinci Code that much, because everybody else's hugely praise it as the greatest novel ever written... duh". So, i picked up the book, in a hope that i'll get a good read.

The book opened with what could easily be teached at "Writing Thriller 101", a passage about some mystery - murder, in this case - which happened several hundred years ago. It was a success-guarantee formula for every successfull thriller novel. Put an opening passage that would surely piqued reader's interest. You know, such as, "I was fifteen years old when i died".

The book, in short, was revolved around a mystery, a puzzle that has been surrounded a book, an actual book, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili for 500 years. The book, has been a favourite subject among literature researchers.

In The Rule of Four, four room-mates at Princeton had its share of involvement with the manuscript. But, instead of dealing with the obsessions of the book, the puzzles (since it was cited by The New York Times as "the ultimate puzzle book"), and the prize behind the puzzle - which of course the things that i would like to see from the book -, it spends a quite considerable amount of time running around in circles told about the customs at Princeton, about "the growing character".. frankly, i dont need characterization, simply because i dont expected to see one. So, imagine my disappointment when more portion of the book spent at the four adolesence men's relationship.

But all in all, i must gave the authors an extra credit for bringing such careful research with the material behind the book and since both of them were relatively young and this was their frist book, the credit went more. Not enough though, for me to attribute this book more than just a mere mildly entertaining, and unless you had time, i wouldn't recommend the book.