Book Review: The Rule of Four

The Ruling: What’s This Book Four?

I had been looking forward to reading The Rule of Four for a while, ever since my brother-in-law had sung its praises. I ravenously tore into the book only to grind to a halt. The book is written in first person point of view (here’s an example from the book, “I’m lying back on the old red sofa in our dorm room . . .”). My reading pace slowed, and then it slowed again as the reading got more tedious. There are very few people who can pull off first person narrative. The main problem with it is that it constantly plays tricks with your brain. The words are saying “I am, or “I go,” but your brain is saying “No I’m not. I’m lying in bed reading this book.”

This style, along with additional elements, turned me off very quickly. So, if my brother-in-law ever reads this, I apologize up front, but I didn’t much care for the book.

The story is of four undergraduate roommates who are drawn into the obsessions of several characters toward the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, a book published in 1499. The book is a cryptic story, part illustrated encyclopedia, part odd novel. Scholars have been trying to unravel the secrets hidden in its pages for 500 years. As the Hypnerotomachia starts to yield its encrypted secrets, murders occur for no compelling reason.

Ok, so you’re sitting back thinking it sounds like Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. Although the book jacket draws comparisons between the two novels, they have very little in common. The stories behind The Rule of Four and The DaVinci Code are based on secret codes hidden in old texts and works of art, but that’s pretty much where the similarities end. The main problem with Rule of Four is that it can never make up its mind if it is a suspenseful action thriller (a la DaVinci Code) or a coming-of-age story.

Quite often, the book interrupts the head of steam it has built up only to delve into extended flashbacks into the characters’ past relationships with each other. Sometimes these tangents would last for a chapter, derailing any action that had taken place. What’s more, the timeline of these events is so close to the present action that it leaves you wondering why the authors didn’t just tell the whole story from beginning to end. I must confess that all these flashbacks did was confuse me as to which time I was reading about, the present or the near present. Did that that scene just happen or did it happen a week ago?


Another problem: so the authors went to Ivy League schools . . . I got it. Now why do I care? The authors do a great job at painting a picture of banal college events like eating clubs and other places at Princeton. The problem is that these scenes do little to move the story along or to enhance character development. Even toward the end of the book, I had trouble remembering which of the four friends did what, “now was that the EMT guy or the orphan? Or are they the same person?” What’s more, I cared very little what happened to the characters because of this lack of development.

I didn’t care if the narrator got the girl or not. I didn’t care if a friend of theirs was killed or this professor or that. I just didn’t care. At one point the main character is forced to choose between his girlfriend and the Hypnerotomachia. I just didn’t buy that at all. Some people trumpet that level of dedication as being “intellectual” (the novel is touted as an intellectual DaVinci Code). If that’s what it is to be an “intellectual,” you can keep all that. I call that an unhealthy obsession akin to alcoholism.

So why did I finish it. Well, first because I wanted to give it a fair chance, after all, my brother-in-law loved it, so I kept reading hoping that it would get better. Second, after you have invested all that time in a project, you want to have something to show for it. I had to finish it.

Go read the Amazon reviews; people either love it or hate it, just like me and my brother-in-law. Can I recommend it? Definitely not, but you might like it (by the way, you can pick up a used hardback on Amazon for .01). I for one am left scratching my head as to how this made it to the New York Times bestseller list. Brilliant marketing, I guess.