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[Review/Facts] The Rule Of Four

The Rule Of Four

Book title : The Rule Of Four
Authors : Ian Caldwell & Dustin Thomason
First Published In : 2004 (UK)
Language : English
Publisher :The Dial Press
Genre : Novel
Pages : 521 (Paperback) / 384 (hardcover)
Buy From Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/Rule-Four-Ian-Caldwell/dp/0440241359

Plot summary @ Wikipedia
The book is set on the Princeton campus during the weekend of Good Friday, 1999. The story involves four Princeton seniors, friends and roommates, getting ready for graduation: Tom, Paul, Charlie and Gil. Two of the students, Tom and Paul, are trying to solve the mystery contained within an extremely rare, beautifully decorated and very mysterious (real) book— the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.

Tom, the narrator, is the son of a professor who had dedicated his life to the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. Throughout the novel, he struggles between being fascinated by the book and trying to pull away from the obsession that drew a rift between his father and his mother and is now causing discord between him and his girlfriend, Katie.

His roommate, Paul Harris, is a brilliant young scholar who is writing his undergraduate thesis on the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. He has spent all four of his undergraduate years studying the book and is close to a breakthrough.

Charlie, the roommate who acts as the parent of the four friends and Gil, heir to a wealthy East-Coast banking family are supporting characters to Tom and Paul’s project.

The novel charts the relationship between the four roommates and how obsession can be both a boon and a burden. It is a story about growing up as much as solving the mystery of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. The disciplines of Renaissance science, history, architecture, and art are drawn upon to solve the mystery.

In the end, Paul discovers that the Hypnerotomachia contains a number of hidden and encyphered texts, with the solution to each one revealing a clue towards the next one. However, after solving a chain of several of these, he finds a text that says that there will be no more clues and he must solve the rest of the book on his own. He realizes that the entire book contains a message encoded by following a “rule of four”, in which the message starts with one letter, then moves to a letter four rows down, then three columns right, then two rows up, then two columns left, and repeating. The placement of this hidden text throughout the entire book explains the Hypnerotamachia’s strange syntax, use of multiple languages, and neologisms. This final text explains that the author of the Hypnerotomachia was a humanist in Renaissance Florence, who created a large underground vault to seal away a number of ancient books and pieces of art to preserve them from the followers of the priest Girolamo Savonarola, and who then sacrificed himself on the Bonfire of the Vanities to help prevent further destruction of humanist treasures.

It also turns out that Paul’s friend Bill Stein and his thesis advisor Vincent Taft were conspiring together to steal Paul’s thesis and claim credit for it, and the sealed vault of treasures. They were murdered by Paul’s wealthy but unstable benefactor Richard Curry to prevent this from happening.

My Review

I finished reading the book about an hour ago.

Two words. It sucks. I can’t believe this book reached the top of the New York Times Bestseller list, remained for more than six months.

Some said, it’s as good as Da Vinci Code (by Dan Brown).Trust me, that’s crap. Da Vinci Code is 10000000 times better than The Rule Of Four. If you’re a fan of Dan Brown (like me), just chuck Ian Caldwell’s book aside. Don’t bother reading it. Why so? Because the story doesn’t seem to have a climax! Zero excitement. Lost count of how many times I yawned. I was telling myself…”Read on…be patient…read on…you’ll soon reach the exciting part of the novel…..WTF???! That’s it??! That’s the end of the book?!”

Another thing, the story (narration of certain events) doesn’t flow smoothly. In other words, the content is not well organised. Plus it’s a bit out of focus too. The authors kept writing on other unimportant stuff (not related to main plot). Language wise, it’s alright. A lot of “Renaissance” terms though. :lmao:

I might be a lousy reader, but I guess I expected more from this book. My advise is, read this book first before reading Dan Brown’s “Da Vinci Code”. Trust me. You’ll notice the vast difference between these two books.

But here are some interesting facts from the book:

Nude Olympics In Princeton University, NJ (Ivy League)

Nude Olympics

Believe or not, that was a tradition in PRINCETON. (I couldn’t believe my brother didn’t tell me about this!)

Here’s some info from wikipedia :
Nude Olympics – annual (nude and partially nude) frolic in Holder Courtyard during the first snow of the winter. Started in the early 1970s, the Nude Olympics went co-ed in 1979 and gained much notoriety with the American press. For safety reasons, the administration banned the Olympics in 2000.

You can read up on the origins of Nude Olympics here : http://tigernet.princeton.edu/~ptoniana/nude.asp

Extras :

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnerotomachia_Poliphili