Eh. It’s clever, writing a book like this one as a follow-up to his own debut. Diving headlong into mystic Christian conspiracy theories, Eco cleverly parodies himself while leveling a broader critique against the human temptation toward gnosis and syncretism. The action surrounding our main characters is also pretty fun.
But the damn thing’s just way too long. Eco tells us over and over again that these imagined connections are meaningless, which makes it difficult to wade through hundreds of pages of historical arcana. By the end, exhaustion had distracted me from his characters’ stories and struggles. A decent editor could have made this great. As it stands, Eco can’t resist the temptation to show off, whether through his own (always modestly disclaimed!) flights of historical fancy, or with inserted experimental fiction that left me cold.
As a sidenote: it was legitimately fascinating to see so much occultism cleanly laid out. I found myself wondering if Mike Mignola used this as a blueprint for his Hellboy universe or if the grail conspiracies are just well-established. But it’s all there: the Templars, Ultimate Thule, Aggartha and on and on…
