“The Lost Symbol” and “A Taint in the Blood”

I finally got to read Dan Brown’s latest “The Lost symbol”. I know, it has been out a year or so… but I somehow couldn’t bring myself to read it. I was fed up with all the commercialism and advertisement around this series (Robert Langdon). Also after reading all of Brown’s books I was sure this one has the same plot. Annnnd, I was right! The same plot and style only weaker and with less details. This last book read like a rushed eulogy to Freemasons. Yes they are good; they are wise, they are…. I was able to guess the identity of culprit less than one quarter into the book. After that I just read the book to fall sleep every night!
I have to bee honest. This story might be interesting for some one without any knowledge of Freemasons’ history and structure. But the crash course in mason history was not enough to cover the rushed plot and weaker points specially the part about Peter’s sister research.
Nothing to write home about, really!

I picked “A Taint in the Blood” by S. M. Stirling because the cover’s illustration vaguely looked liked Ian Somerhalder! Well, I paid for this shallowness dearly. Ok, excuse my drama! The book is full of dark scenes, S&M tortures and a couple of idiot heroes. It reads more like dark fantasies of an older guy than a novel. And that whole Shadowspawn concept is full of contrasts, these omnipotent wild people living and preying on humanity? Unbelievable.
That sounds like contradiction, doesn’t it? That I can accept and even love a lot of urban fantasy and supernatural novels but not this one? I guess this race is not well defined, they don’t have any weakness either; like they are the prototype for modern gods or something and that is what sounds so false to me.
Does this even make sense?!