{"id":1149,"date":"2004-06-02T23:23:44","date_gmt":"2004-06-03T03:23:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/2004\/06\/02\/the-rule-of-four\/"},"modified":"2007-07-30T22:39:12","modified_gmt":"2007-07-31T02:39:12","slug":"the-rule-of-four","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/2004\/06\/02\/the-rule-of-four\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rule of Four."},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div><p>Finished reading <em>The Rule of Four<\/em>, which I actually picked up on a whim after it pretty much invaded my local Barnes &amp; Noble.  I did think the style of writing was on a higher level than The Da Vinci Code, but then again, DVC read like it was written by a 12-year old in places (particularly whenever Brown attempted to write something resembling romance).  I do agree with some of the other criticisms, in particular that it ended too early.  I like the possibilities that it left open, but at the same time, like The Quincunx, it&#8217;s somewhat annoying to read through an entire book, actually invest yourself in the characters&#8217; quests, and then be left hanging, not sure what step they&#8217;re going to take next, and not knowing if they ultimately reach the goal they&#8217;ve been striving for over several hundred pages.  I personally think that kind of ending is a cop-out.  It&#8217;s like the writers don&#8217;t want the cliche &quot;happy\/resolved ending&quot;, and they don&#8217;t trust themselves to be able to write something that overcomes the cliche, so they don&#8217;t give us an ending at all.<\/p>\n<p>And to be honest?  sometimes people like the cliche.  That&#8217;s pretty much why it&#8217;s become cliche in the first place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Finished reading The Rule of Four, which I actually picked up on a whim after it pretty much invaded my local Barnes &amp; Noble. I did think the style of writing was on a higher level than The Da Vinci Code, but then again, DVC read like it was written by a 12-year old in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[],"tags":[4],"class_list":["post-1149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-books"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6ZBi-ix","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1149\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}