Fans have been queuing to get their hands on Inferno, the latest Dan Brown blockbuster, and the critics seem no less gleeful. For reviewers, it's not the prospect of Brown's famously terrible prose spurring them on (the Guardian critic Steven Poole alighted on the line "a powerfully built woman effortlessly unstraddled her BMW motorcycle") but the chance to deliver an old-fashioned hatchet job. Still, it wasn't all bad:

"Narration appears lifted from a Fodor's guide, as when Langdon pauses in the middle of a life-or-death escape to remember the history of a bridge: 'Today the vendors are mostly goldsmiths and jewelers, but that has not always been the case. Originally the bridge had been home to Florence's vast, open-air market, but the butchers were banished in 1593.' It's like trying to solve a mystery while one of those self-guided tour headsets is dangling from your ears." Monica Hesse, Washington Post

"The early sections of Inferno come so close to self-parody that Mr Brown seems to have lost his bearings – as has Langdon, who begins the book in a hospital bed with a case of amnesia that dulls his showy wits." Janet Maslin, New York Times

"As a stylist Brown gets better and better: where once he was abysmal he is now just very poor. His prose, for all its detailing of brand names and the exact heights of buildings, is characterised by imprecision. It works to prevent the reader from engaging with the story ... But in the end this is his worst book, and for a sad, even noble, reason – his ambition here wildly exceeds his ability." Jake Kerridge, The Daily Telegraph

"The new novel is probably the closest Brown will ever get to his version of The Hangover: Langdon wakes up in a Florence hospital with a bad case of retrograde amnesia after a gunshot head wound and a strange object connected to Dante's Inferno." Brian Truitt, USA Today