Book #18: The Rule of Four

Title: The Rule of Four
Author: Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason

Tom and Paul, seniors at Princeton, get lost in the puzzle created by the Hypnerotomachia (an obscure Renaissance text) and encounter danger in the process.

The Rule of Four is a puzzle book, often lumped into the same category as The DaVinci Code. However, as I read it for the second time for my book group, I think that the comparison both gives it too much and not enough credit (if that's possible). What I mean is that as a puzzle book, it doesn't really work. While we got to work out the puzzles along with Robert and Sophie, in The Rule of Four, we never actually get to puzzle over the puzzles on our own, which felt like a shortcoming to me (remember The Westing Game from childhood and how satisfying it felt to work out those puzzles?). On the other hand, I felt Thomason and Caldwell were superior to Dan Brown in giving their characters emotional depth, a feat that I think is especially impressive in a book written by two people (how do two people write fiction together? It seems impossible to me). One thing that I missed the first time I read the book but appreciated this time around was the side story of Tom's broken femur, his recovery, and his continuing limp. We know a little bit too much about broken femurs at our house to skim over that part this time.