The Rule of Four

Where Do I Sign Up for a Refund?
This book is the work of amateurs. Plot elements are laid bare with only superficial attempts at building suspense. The central quartet of characters are shallow and unendearing. This reads more like a freshman guide to Princeton than a mystery novel. The 'mystery' of the book is dull and predictable, and the 'climax' was reminiscent of bad sexual experiences - unfulfilling and making me happy it was over. Instead of buying this book, light a $20 bill on fire. It will save you from wasting time on this pathetic story and you can warm your hands with it.

A good idea but very poorly executed. The overall plot line and the detective work of finding the meaning of the manuscript is good but the writing style made me batty. There were large chunks of action that were almost impossible to follow, bigger chunks of pretentious moralizing, and even larger parts of "Ah, poor me, so hard to live a life of privelege at Princeton." There were also annoying things like verb tenses changing in the midst of paragraphs. The ending was a long slow let down as well. Overall, I felt like the angst of the 20 somethings was in full flower.

A debut novel by two Princeton grads, this story has a Dan Brown quality immersing the reader into the Renaissance years while the main two characters work to uncover the meaning of a mysterious book written in 1499. Well researched, paced and developed it engages the reader, raises questions and demonstrates good storytelling. The only fault I can find is somewhat of a let down with the finale. This isn't uncommon with first books though it did diminish the six years of work the authors invested. Regardless, I enjoyed it thoroughly and recommend it to anyone.

This tale of four Princeton students trying to discover a coded message in an ancient Renaissance text could have been worthwhile. Alas, besides a few interesting insights into Renaissance history, this book disappoints on almost every imaginable level.

Not that Da Vinci code sets the bar very high, but the plot of Rule of Four lurches from boring to preposterous, with the authors occassionally achieving both of these states simultaneously, which I suppose is a literary feat of sorts. Long, tedious chapters about undergrad life at Princeton, a half dozen pointless subplots, and awkward/unconvincing character development alternate with brief moments of action that feel contrived and silly. There's simply no logical reason for the boys to show more expend all that time and energy evading police inquiries that can't possibly implicate them; no explanation for why the boys suddenly figure out how to unlock codes whose solutions have eluded them for years; and no excuse for the preposterous motive attributed to the baddie of the piece.

Above all, if you're going to market yourself as a Da Vinci code rival, you need a boffo reveal at the end ... something like, say, Jesus was married! The secret revealed at the end of this tale is neither original nor particularly interesting. Even worse (from a plotting standpoint), it's buried after a long passage of endnote-type text, way after whatever shreds of suspense the authors managed to generate have unravelled and you're just wishing the thing would dribble to an end.

Rarely have I ever read a book that was in more desperate need of workshopping! I have to believe a group of professional writers, given the chance, would have warned the authors that (1) giving characters elaborate backstories doesn't necessarily make them interesting or likeable, (2) manufacturing/sustaining suspense requires pacing and a credible threat, (3) if you're going to write a book about codes and puzzles, your readers are going to expect you to sustain a certain standard of logic, and (4) leave present tense to the professionals! show less

Having heard this mentioned as 'Dan Brown for people without massive brain damage' I was very interested to see if it would live up to that (admittedly faint) praise. The Rule of Four, about two Princeton students obsession for the secrets locked in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, doesn't disappoint.

In contrast with the action-packed, Mary Sue-riddled work of Brown 'The Rule of Four' might seem positively boring. There are deaths, murders in fact, ancient treasures, riddles hidden in the text of the book by the use of cryptography and steganography and yet there are no chase scenes, no exploding buildings or larger than life villains. It feels like something that could happen, not something that could be shot as a movie.

What 'The Rule show more of Four' does have is characters you grow to care about, people who operate in a moral shade of grey where obsession and love battle for attention throughout their life. I've never set foot on an American university campus and yet I felt like I belonged there, drawn into the atmosphere by Caldwell and Thomason.

The main antagonist, scholar Vincent Taft, is equally convincing as a brilliant but petty man who can't abide to see his work reduced to nothing by a young student and his fellows and the protagonists' friends are real, not handy plot devices to pull the story along.

I enjoyed it immensely. show less

I came across this as I was cataloguing my collection and then remembered why I kept it.
I kept it as a reminder to never believe blurbers who promise the next F. Scott Fitzgerald, Umberto Eco and Dan Brown in a new book and to never believe Nelson DeMille as a blurber ever again. I think I also had an expectation that this book would have some tie-in to Arthur Conan Doyle's The Sign of Four, but I don't remember that being met.
I've forgotten all of this book except that it took place at a university and the characters and the plot were tiresome.
Caveat emptor.

The "Rule of Three" in Freemasonry refers to the ritual pronunciation of a secret word that can only be properly spoken "in a trible voice," i.e. by three initiates working together. Similarly, Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason's bestseller debut novel The Rule of Four concerns itself with a secret that is only accessed by the combined efforts of four Princeton University roommates. The text of the novel never mentions the Masonic Rule of Three, and instead explains the title as the name for a purported textual code. But that sort of indirection is not out of keeping for a book that is preoccupied with tacit allusions as riddles.

While the publishers have understandably chosen to pitch The Rule of Four to the enormous (and apparently show more undiscriminating) DaVinci Code market, the bestseller to which it most deserves comparison is Arturo Perez-Reverte's The Club Dumas. Not only are both of them fast-paced, literary thrillers, but they share a thematic concern with the phenomena of textual obsession and multiple authorship. In the case of The Rule of Four, there are actually two credited authors of the novel itself, a pair of men who "have been best friends since they were eight years old," who have now written what they describe as "a book about friendship."

Perez-Reverte invented the diabolist tome The Book of the Nine Doors of the Kingdom of Shadows by Aristide Torchia (Venice 1666) as the obsessive focus for his novel. Certain features of that imaginary book--its scarcity and value, offensiveness to Christian sensibilities, provocative woodcut illustrations, and impenetrable text--suggest that it may have been modeled on the actual Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (Venice 1499), which serves as the enigmatic text around which The Rule of Four is constructed. At this point, I drop the third-person objectivity of the reviewer, since I wrote my own Doctorandus Degree Thesis on the Hypnerotomachia.

Caldwell and Thomason write (in the voice of their principal character): "My father, who understood the way the Hypnerotomachia had seduced him, once compared the book to an affair with a woman. It makes you lie, he said, even to yourself." (98) The authors have perhaps lied to themselves a little regarding the feasibility of the code that their characters discover in the Hypnerotomachia, and they resolve the authorship controversy regarding this superfically anonymous book differently than my studies have led me to do. But I admit that my breath caught with wonder at the possibility that they had shared some of my own discoveries about the book, when the solution to one of its alleged riddles was approached through a Thomas More quote regarding a game "rather like chess" involving "a pitched battle between virtues and vices." (202-03) But I was relieved to find that, after all, these novelists and I were not unwittingly duplicating each other's ideas.

I recommend Hypnerotomachia translator Joscelyn Godwin's "unauthorized guide" to the novel: The Real Rule of Four, which exposes some of the points where Caldwell and Thomason get their history wrong, and fascinating points that they missed. Despite its inaccuracies and failings, The Rule of Four is an elegant, engaging read, with its own literary depth. It is a fiction, and its claims about the Hypnerotomachia text are inventive (and sometimes quite unlikely). But in one lovely passage of sustained metaphor with multiple allusions, the authors highlight the power of fiction:

"For a moment I feel like Sancho Panza, listening to Don Quixote. The giants he sees are nothing but windmills, I know, and yet he's the one who sees clearly in the dark, and I'm the one doubting my eyes. Maybe that's been the rub all along, I think: we are animals of imagination. Only a man who sees giants can ever stand upon their shoulders."

The imaginative vision of The Rule of Four makes it a worthwhile read. show less