As much a leading character as Langdon is one of his previous associates, Katherine Solomon. She is a noetic scientist and is in Prague to deliver a lecture about human consciousness and the exploration of neuroscience. She and Langdon have taken their relationship to the next level as they have confessed their love for each other.
Katherine is about to have her scientific investigaions about the mind, cognitive functions, the realities of life and death, and neurochemistry published in a new book. However, it seems as though she struck a raw nerve with the CIA and highly secretive arms of the United States intelligence community. They all want her manuscript destroyed and in the process of trying to do this Langdon and Solomon's lives are also in danger. They have discovered a highly secretive lab that has been running experiments on the brains of epileptic patients. One of these patients is Sasha Vesna, whom Dr. Brigita Gessner has brought out of Russia for her experiments.
The morning after her lecture, Langdon sets out for his morning swim and on the way back to the hotel encounters a strange figure on Charles Bridge -the Golěm of Prague. He has seen this figure before in his dream and rushes back to the hotel only to find Katherine gone. He suspects a bomb in the hotel, pulls the fire alarm, and jumps into the Vltava River. The Prague police become involved and he must explain him self to members of the Czech office for Foreign Relations. The U.S. Embassy gets involved with Ambassador Heide Nagel and her staff.
Meanwhile, back in NYC, Penguin Random House editor, has been kidnapped and realizes that Katherine's manuscript has been deleted from the servers. He tries to escape to be able to recover the missing pages and warn Langdon and Solomon of the dangers.
The mysterious Golěm, Sasha Vesna's safety, the Threshold underground lab, and the interest in Solomon's book provide the mystery and peril in the novel. What consumes a lot of the 671 pages, however, are the scientific theories and discussion of the neuroscience, the dangers of technology and artificial intelligence, and the nature of human consciousness. Those discussions bogged down the novel for me, and I did skip many of the extended conversations to get to the culmination of the actual plot line.
The descriptions of so many of Prague's beautiful areas were a plus and enhanced by the map that was provided on the end papers. It brought back memories of St. Vitus Cathedral when Langdon took the pulpit to explain to Katherine what he had known all along.
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| St. Vitus Cathedral |
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| Pulpit at St. Vitus Cathedral |
