[C Elegans]

I dug up this because I finally gave in to group pressure and read the bloody book, and after 2 chapters I remembered this accurate parody.

The book was horrible. The tricks were really cheap and the end so anticlimactic it made me annoyed. Of course I should have known better, I had decided long ago not to read this book, but - more and more people around me claim they thought it was good, and I can't very well keep a negative attitude towards a book I haven't read. So I read is yesterday night, but I refused to buy it so I borrowed it from a friend.

I thought it was like a tabloid version of Umberto Eco's fiction. Not only did the cheap cliffhangers annoy me, it also annoyed me that the riddles which are supposed to be made by this expert in crypto and semiotics, and only dechifferable by other experts, were so ridiculously simple - and I'm not even good at riddles, I just happen to have gone through primary school and be familiar with France and the UK. The most disappointing part was the ending, though. What could have been at least a decent thriller, suitable for reading while waiting for a delayed flight in half-asleep condition, was totally spoiled by the end. Not only did the writer present common knowledge as if it were something dramatic, but it also had a sentimental and guess what! romantic flavour. Sigh. I am sure it will be apt as a Hollywood movie. A pity I wasted 5 hours reading this crap.

PS - the writer must now have known any French women in his life, the very idea that a French city woman in her 30's would be so shocked by seeing somebody close to her participate in a sex-cult so she refused to ever talk to that person, cleary comes from an American!