The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
“There’s no worse thief than a bad book.”
“Strange thing, time. It weighs most on those who have it least.”
“There was an unspoken prejudice among book-learned people, a secret conviction they all seemed to share, that life as we know it is an imperfect vision of reality, and that only art, like a pair of reading glasses, can correct it.”
“The strong take from the weak, but the smart take from the strong.”
“The greatest violence in the world was against art, against knowledge.”
The Rule of Four is about a manuscript that is about 500 years old and the people that are enthralled with it. The main character is Tom. He is the son of someone who was obsessed with this work and ended up dying in a car crash when Tom was younger. We also have Tom’s friends which include Gil, Charlie, and Paul. Paul has become enamored with this text and spends almost all of his time digging into the secrets. He purposefully became friends with Tom. We follow Tom as he navigates school and the quest to discover the secret of the Hypnerotomachia. He must manage his relationships with the book, girlfriend, and his friends, especially Paul. This work has been around hundreds of years, but no one has been able to figure it out. The group must dodge untrustworthy characters and death. Who will survive? Will the secret finally be revealed? Who will remain friends?
This book has two authors. Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason did a great job of coming up with an engaging and engrossing story. This is the type of story I love. I get to learn about history and cultural things as well as be a part of a kind of treasure hunt. The different pieces of information that are provided gives me a jolt of excitement like when belladonna, Procrustes, and the etymology of sarcophagus are described. There were also several platitudes sprinkled throughout that caught my attention. I know I start these posts with quotes but I also like to sprinkle some throughout the text as well like “never invest yourself in anything so deeply that its failure could cost you your happiness” and “a good friend stands in harm’s way for you the second you ask – but a great friend does it without being asked at all.” It is funny the way it appeared in the book. It is the main character relaying things he learned from his parents. One chapter ends with what his father taught him and the next chapter starts with something his mother said. Another is, “The two hardest things to contemplate in life…are failure and age.” There was a section in the book that discusses the concentration of geniuses in Florence, and that really struck me. I am like that seems like a good premise for a book. Some of the words I came across and took note of were Nilotic, crapulent, autodidact, steganography. and ersatz. Something that bothered me though was how the timelines seemed sort of muddled. It was hard to discern if something happened before or after the main storyline. The details and stories involving girlfriends and school seemed unnecessary. They didn’t add to the story, and felt like sections you had to sludge through to reach the exciting puzzle work. Paul was also sort of annoying and selfish. I also found the ending sort of lacking. It was anti-climatic and boring. No resolution. I wanted the treasure hunt to have a finale. I did fly through this book, somewhat thanks to a snowstorm. This is exactly the type of book to read if you like Dan Brown or art history or literature in general.
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