YMMV / The Lost Symbol

• Ending Fatigue: The book reaches its big reveal, then subjects the reader to several additional chapters of dull exposition.
• Fridge Logic: The story contains multiple instances of rather questionable logic and plot decisions:
  • Given that in the end it is revealed that the hidden 'Word' is nothing more than the Bible (the 'word of god'), why did Peter not reveal this to prevent his mother getting murdered, or to save himself from being tortured and having his hand amputated?
  • It's mentioned that Sato was born in the Manzanar internment camp during World War II, and that because of it she "had never forgotten the horrors of war, or the perils of insufficient military intelligence." The problem with that? If she was born in Manzanar, she would have been THREE when the war was over. It's possible her parents could have told her about it later, but still.
  • Why did the Freemason set up a whole secret pyramid code and treasure hunt, just to point to the copy of a Bible - of which there are many copies?
  • The ancient mysteries are so powerful that they have to be hidden, to avoid them falling into the wrong hands. But at the end it is revealed that all religious texts (including the publicly available bible, a copy of which turns out to be the secret treasure), contains the instructions. This does not appear to be a good way of hiding anything.
  • How did the CIA know that Mal'akh was going to publish the video? He had only threatened Peter with it at the end, and had no reason to try to blackmail the CIA. Why would he have voluntarily also made the CIA his mortal enemy?
  • Did no one in the Free Masons ever notice his weird makeup and hidden tattoos? Not in any of the ceremonies involving robes, rituals, liquids, etc? For instance, pulling the hood off him would have removed some of his makeup and revealed him as a tattoo-ed freak.
  • If a single video of some of the ceremonies and people involved would be such a dramatic national security breach and likely to bring chaos to the USA - would the Masons not have slightly better security and e.g. check for hidden electronic devices?
  • If Mal'akh had so much influence (he was able to get the Architect to help him initially), and he know SBB 13 was the hiding place of the pyramid - why did he not just go and get the Pyramid himself rather than dramatically place a severed hand in the Capitol? He then could have decrypted it at his leisure. Similarly, he could have just had Langdon delivered to his house (instead of the Capitol) with the keystone and tortured him there to methododically solve the puzzles - rather than set up a mad against-the-clock race.
  • Peter's son inherited a large fortune, and is then (seemingly) killed in a prison. Surely the family lawyers would have recovered a large amount of the assets? They can't all be in a some sort of hidden bank accounts that would 'disappear' or could have been 'stolen' by other prisoners or the warden (as Peter thought at the time). The Solomon family lawyers would have used the death certificate and lack or Last Will to simply take most if not all of his portfolio back, leaving Zachary/Mal'akh with no money for his weird lifestyle and schemes
  • When Mal'ahk knows that the CIA is after him (and he has recently killed a CIA agent inside his own home), why does he not give Robert more time to solve the riddle of the pyramid? If Robert had not solved it so quickly, he would have 'drowned' and then Mal'ahk would have had to wait for quite a while to get him back to a state where he could be questioned.
• Like You Would Really Do It: Kill off Robert Langdon? Really?
• Nightmare Fuel: It's bad enough that Mal'akh drowns Katherine's assistant and (seemingly) Langdon (one in a tank of ethanol, the other in a coffin filling with water compounded with his claustrophia), but the point-of-view switches to those characters in their last moments submerged and dying. At least we learn Langdon averts death, but he's gonna need some therapy...
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: Dan Brown seems to have learned several lessons from critics of The Da Vinci Code and taken them to heart.
• The Un-Twist: The apparent Big Bad genuinely turns out to be the actual Big Bad, rather than The Lancer or The Mentor suddenly pulling a Face–Heel Turn and revealing themselves to have been the mastermind all along. Since this goes against the convention established in every single one of his previous books, this also counts as a Meta Twist.

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