Well, I wonaEUR(tm)t lie. I had fun. 
 Dan Brown novels are like Michael Bay movies; both were once cool and are now timeworn by overstaying the welcome. Well, if you are content with what to expect, they could still be easy entertainment. But this one surprised me, by being bad. I was more curious about whether everything in this book will remain in Spain or move to Catalonia by the time I finished it, than the promised big secret. aEUR~Nobody expects the Spanish InquisitionaEUR(tm), right? 
 For the fifth time in a row, existence of the world is threatened by a aEUR~secretaEUR(tm); unraveling of which, requires a complicated scheme of solving codes hidden in modern art and literature by nefarious cults over centuries. And again for the fifth time in a row, it is up to Harward symbologist Prof. Robert Langdon to solve this mystery alongside his brand new disposable female Boswell; while being chased by Police, though cooperation is a perfectly logical option. I was all in for this formula, but Brown decided to up the game by giving Langdon a personal Jarvis and his own version of conspiracy reddit. And if you, like me, are expecting some continuation or even mention of the Childhoods End scenario, Inferno had left us in, prepare to be disappointed; it gets zero mention. The transformative discovery at the end of the book, which is the primary incentive for reading, was doomed to be a presentation on thermodynamics and diffusion physics from the very start, despite the over dramatic built up of an Apple event. I was left all the more infuriated by Brown comparing his big secret with CopernicusaEUR(tm)s heliocentrism, DarwinaEUR(tm)s evolution and EinsteinaEUR(tm)s relativity, while all he did was to pretend like he just invented the genre of cyberpunk. 
 I might have grown too old to completely enjoy this, but more importantly, I think Dan Brown has grown older. You know itaEUR(tm)s too far fetching when Langdon has to deduce corporate logos such as Uber, to show his specialty of aEUR~romance in short notice.aEUR(tm) Dan Brown repeatedly asserts LangdonaEUR(tm)s female companion as a woman of her own, and then proceeds to prove her otherwise. He was trying too hard to be cool, by hook or crook, from Asimov, Clarke, Blake to Star Wars and Fermi Paradox and Ted Talks and Neil deGrasse Tyson. And there were product placements, I donaEUR(tm)t know whether that is a thing for books, but, CNN, Uber, Tesla, Apple and FedEx did seem to have their hand in sponsorship. Below is a cringy example 
 aEURoeIn reality, Edmond loved attention, and admitted to keeping his plane at Sabadell only to have an excuse to drive the winding roads to his home in his favorite sports caraEUR"a Tesla Model X P90D that Elon Musk had allegedly hand-delivered to him as a gift. Supposedly, Edmond had once challenged his jet pilots to a one-mile drag race on the runwayaEUR"Gulfstream vs. Tesla