“The decisions of our past are the architects of our present.”

TW: alcohol, blood, body horror, body-shaming, claustrophobia, confinement, death, death of a loved one, drug use, eugenics, fatphobia, genocide, infertility, injury/injury detail, kidnapping, medical content, medical trauma, mental illness, pandemic/epidemic, panic attacks/disorders, pregnancy, racism (including use of Romani slur and negative stereotyping), rape, sexism, sexual assault, sexual content, suicide, violence.

For someone that doesn't believe in the term 'guilty pleasures', I can't deny that this is definitely my guilty pleasure series.

There's no denying that the Robert Langdon series is cheap fiction, with formulaic plots and enough conveniences to make one roll their eyes quite often. Not to mention the issue of the way women are written (there is the same variation of a sexy, smart ((yet not so smart that the equally sexy, fit, ageing Professor Robert Langdon can't teach them)) female character every. single. book.) or any of the other list of issues I could present.

And yet... there's something inexplicably fun about these books, despite all of the grim and often grotesque plotlines.

As for Inferno specifically, I can't help but feel conflicted. In some ways, this was the best of the Robert Langdon novels thus far and in others... it was undoubtedly the worst. It was the first of his books to actually catch me (partially) by surprise, whether through good writing or my own exhaustion, I do not know. It was also the hardest for me to get into and the bleakest of all of his books.

I always have issues with the representation (or lack thereof) in this series, but it felt even worse in this book. From having a sexually assaulted woman refer to herself as damaged goods, implying that infertility made one incomplete, the rampant fatphobia, and equating female baldness with being a monster(?) things were just handled very, very poorly. Which isn't surprising, but still felt a bit worse from his other works.

With that being said, I flew through this book. For being pretty chunky, it was an incredible fast-paced, quick read. Even though I predicted most things, there was an element that shocked me, the feeling of shocked whilst reading was a surprise in and of itself. I both enjoyed it and hated it, which leaves me rather conflicted on my overall feelings.

So I shall put it this way: it was a decent Robert Langdon book, but perhaps not a decent book.