The Rule of Four
by Dustin Thomason, Ian Caldwell
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Book Summary Information
Author: Dustin Thomason, Ian CaldwellEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2005-06-28
ISBN: 0440241359
Number of pages: 464
Publisher: Dell
Book Reviews of The Rule of Four
Book Review: wow, can a book be this awful??
Summary: 1 Stars
How did I end up with this thing? It's like it was written by a five year old savant (sorry five year olds and savants).
There are those who suggest that we who don't like The Rule of Four aren't "cerebral" or "sophisticated". Are they kidding?
Within the first three pages our first victims (greedy horsemen) are murdered by an unknown "mason" for having been unfaithful to the "master". What a concept! (Imagine the betrayal when your greedy horseman is found to be unfaithful!)
"And though the men struggled to recognize him through their unfocused eyes , the mason did as he'd been told: he took his sword and beheaded them."
No, it doesn't make more sense when read in context.
"The fate of their carcasses, it's probably best not to guess. Their parts were tossed into the streets and collected by the dustcarts, I hope, or eaten by dogs before they could find themselves baked into a pie."
Have I gotten you sophisticates? Well put more beer in your Dixie cups and grab some more pork rinds cause it gets even better-
"But the butcher found another use for the two men's heads. A baker in town, a man with a touch of the devil in him, bought the heads from the butcher and placed them in his own oven as he left for the night."
You can imagine the hilarity that ensues when found by the local widows using the ovens!
Five years and three thousand miles later those words still reek of the pizza burps and beer that inspired them (again sorry to pizza, burps and beer). The only mystery here is how this garbage was published or better yet- sold!!!
Summary of The Rule of Four
An ivy league murder, a mysterious coded manuscript, and the secrets of a Renaissance prince collide memorably in The Rule of Four-a brilliant work of fiction that weaves together suspense and scholarship, high art and unimaginable treachery.It's Easter at Princeton. Seniors are scrambling to finish their theses. And two students, Tom Sullivan and Paul Harris, are a hair's breadth from solving the mysteries of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili-a renowned text attributed to an Italian nobleman, a work that has baffled scholars since its publication in 1499. For Tom, their research has been a link to his family's past-and an obstacle to the woman he loves. For Paul, it has become an obsession, the very reason for living. But as their deadline looms, research has stalled-until a long-lost diary surfaces with a vital clue. And when a fellow researcher is murdered just hours later, Tom and Paul realize that they are not the first to glimpse the Hypnerotomachia 's secrets.
Suddenly the stakes are raised, and as the two friends sift through the codes and riddles at the heart of the text, they are beginnning to see the manuscript in a new light-not simply as a story of faith, eroticism and pedantry, but as a bizarre, coded mathematical maze. And as they come closer and closer to deciphering the final puzzle of a book that has shattered careers, friendships and families, they know that their own lives are in mortal danger. Because at least one person has been killed for knowing too much. And they know even more.
From the streets of fifteenth-century Rome to the rarified realm of the Ivy League, from a shocking 500 year-old murder scene to the drama of a young man's coming of age, The Rule of Four takes us on an entertaining, illuminating tour of history-as it builds to a pinnacle of nearly unbearable suspense.
From the Hardcover edition.
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