Reviews

The Rule Of Four by Ian Caldwell

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jxg255's review against another edition

4.0

The main story was pretty good and intriguing. The relationships with the main character are a little difficult to believe in some cases. Those that like Da Vinci Code will like this.

bledoux's review against another edition

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2.0

Going into this book I wasn't sure what I was going to get into, I had picked this up for free from my school's free bookshelf cause the back interested me. From the beginning I was bored with it, I think there are so many spots where scenes could either be cut down or cut out completely. It all read to me as filler and fluff that didnt need to be there.

It took a long time for the story to pick up but I will admit once it did I was interested and engaged. I was wondering what was going to happen next. But that doesnt happen till about halfway through the book and I'm not sure if it was worth getting there.

This books follows four friends, Tom, Paul, Charlie, and Gil as they decipher an ancient book. It's sort of like a Da Vinci Code type but takes place at Princeton. It's more of a Tom and Paul story to be honest and the other two friends feel like they're there for the sake of them two. Since these 4 guys are at Princeton the book reads as a sort of love letter to princeton, considering the books two authors went there. At times I also found the main character, Tom, to be pretentious while he tried to be humble and it just did not work for him.

I was originally going to give it a 3 star review but the ending is one of the most unsatisfying things I've ever read it gets knocked down. I mean really, the book is left to be open but the authors spent 445 pages of filler and boring character development just to cut the ending short and get lazy, it annoyed me.

For as long as this book was I don't want to talk about it anymore.

It was just meh.

novelesque_life's review against another edition

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3.0

3.5 STARS

"Princeton. Good Friday, 1999. On the eve of graduation, two friends are a hairsbreadth from solving the mysteries of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, a Renaissance text that has baffled scholars for centuries. Famous for its hypnotic power over those who study it, the five-hundred-year-old Hypnerotomachia may finally reveal its secrets - to Tom Sullivan, whose father was obsessed with the book, and Paul Harris, whose future depends on it.

As the deadline looms, research has stalled - until a vital clue is unearthed: a long-lost diary that may prove to be the key to deciphering the ancient text. But when a longtime student of the book is murdered just hours later, a chilling cycle of deaths and revelations begins - one that will force Tom and Paul into a fiery drama, spun from a book whose power and meaning have long been misunderstood." (From Amazon)

This is a better mystery than the Da Vinci Code, but not the best out there.

grace_mae's review against another edition

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Enjoyed the majority of this though it didn't leave a huge impression by the end. I'm not sure it aged well. I was charmed but also rolled my eyes a lot; I wish I had read it when I was younger, in high school maybe, when I think I would have connected with the pretentious, self serious feeling of being a know-it-all college senior more than I do now as a recent college grad.