I have to say I didn’t particularly love this book, even though I don’t have anything bad to say about it either. Foucault’s Pendulum is my first Eco novel, and all I knew about it going in was that it could be called dark academia to a certain extent (which I can confirm). It mostly deals with real conspiracy theories and secret societies related to the knights templar. On paper, this was interesting enough to me. Execution wise, more than a novel it felt like an encyclopaedia of historical and para-historical events that have enormous yet largely hidden historical significance. I certainly learned a lot about movements related to the templars and the rosicrucians,  for example, among other esoteric and hermetic philosophies. I won’t lie and say that half the time I felt like this was just a smarter version of the Da Vinci Code, which absolutely ripped off this novel, although of course many of these legends are pretty much in the public domain. I guess I kept questioning what was real and what was fiction. I think largely the work that the fictional characters do before delving into their own plan, reconstructs historical thrusts or very highly regarded believes, that mostly belong to the realm of the occult. Very fascinating indeed. But the clever thing, I guess, is that by making the characters go totally off script, with a plausible but nevertheless made up plan, Eco swiftly turns on his reader and calls everyone who gave credence to these things stupid (or diabolical). 

Still, I guess for however clever and informative it was, the book never drew me to its characters much. I get what they represent, each of their struggles and their personal development, but I guess I wasn’t really wild about any of it. I also think I would have appreciated it more if I had already known about the templars, at least more extensively.