Authors: Ian Caldwell & Dustin Thomason
The Rule of Four is a way of hiding a message within a grid formed by another message. It consists of a set of four directions and their distance values. Given a message arranged into a grid and given a starting position on the grid, one can find out the hidden message by following the stated Rule of Four. A point on the grid is a letter and by following the Rule of Four letter by letter, one gets the message.
What is the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili? According to the historical note given in the book The Rule Of Four, it is one of the most treasured and least understood books of early Western printing. Scholars continue to debate the identity and intent of the Hypnerotomachia's mysterious author, Francesco Colonna. Only in December of 1999 did the first complete English translation of the Hypnerotomachia appear in print. Google points me to the Wikipedia site with more information on Hypnerotomachia Poliphili which you can read at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnerotomachia_Poliphili
The Rule of Four is about two Princeton University undergraduates, Tom Sullivan and Paul Harris, whose lives became entwined because of the Hypnerotomachia. It talked about how their obsession (one as influenced by his father) in deciphering the Renaissance text affected their relationships with each other as well as with the people around them. Their quest to unravel the secret that lies within the ancient book was a long and tedious one that had threatened to stall until the appearance of a long-lost diary. Then what seems to be just an absorbing path to discovery became dangerous when their lives were punctured by a murder of a fellow researcher of the Hypnerotomachia.
The Rule of Four is an intelligent book, with it being based on another extremely intelligent book, the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. The older book is definitely a work of art in the domain of cryptography. It encompassed techniques such as steganography, ciphers in different languages, and riddles to keys to unlock the hidden messages. The messages were hidden using the method of making the first letters of some words the letters from the plain-text. Understanding this method in fact is how the name of the author is known. The riddles themselves requires in-depth and multi-disciplinary knowledge of Renaissance art, math, and literature. Other suspected methods of encrypting the author's secret messages included using maps or geographical directions though all puzzles ultimately are of the use of words. The encryption is usually two-fold, one for the keys and another the cipher-texts using keys. You have to admire the writers of The Rule of Four for telling one of the best work in crypto-analysis.
The writers also injected many philosophies ranging from Renaissance to their own. It is also one of the themes for the characters of the story relied on their philosophies to decide their paths in life which eventually tore them apart. Friendships are hard to maintain when friends start to drift away from their views on life.
However, to say that The Rule of Four is better than The Da Vinci Code can be an overstatement. Though it excels in the presenting of a fascinating breakthrough and the process involved, it fails in being a thriller. The pace of the story is far too slow. The first 10 chapters are about the background of the two undergraduates and their lives in Princeton. There is also a lot of descriptions of the university that are hard for a non-Princeton student to visualise and leave no impression on a foreign reader like me. The fictional part simply just doesn't add much value to the book.
The book also uses present tense to narrate the story from Tom's point-of-view. I understand that the writers wanted to involve the reader, to make the reader feels like he/she is part of the story. The use of 'I' as the pronoun in the narration makes it as though the reader is either repeating the story or reading someone's diary. However, this doesn't appeal to me but may work for you.
The use of present tense does however serves another purpose. The book contains many flashbacks by Tom and the present tense helps to differentiate the differences in time. But there were still times where I lost track and became confused. IMHO, having a time-stamp on the switch of events will be better for the reader.
So in all, the book is intelligent as well as philosophical. If you have the patience to overcome the initial slow pace of the story, I am sure you will not regret reading The Rule of Four.
[Ultimate Spoiler]
Paul Harris, with the help of Tom and others, managed to decrypt the message hidden by Francesco Colonna and found out that Francesco had hidden a treasure of priceless items in a secret location. The treasure included artwork and literatures by Renaissance artists and scholars of the Italian city Florence. He hid them to prevent the preacher Savonarola from burning them. Savonarola, a fanatic, had burned numerous precious artworks and books in the name of God to purify people's souls. Francesco tried to save as many of Man's beautiful creations as possible from Savonarola. And this is the story within the story of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. As for the Princeton murders of Bill Stein and Vincent Taft, they were committed by Paul's mentor, Richard Curry, to prevent them from stealing Paul's research. Different people in different times but same motive with the same result.
[/Ultimate Spoiler]
