Today is the big day for Dan Brown fans

We have been waiting. Impatiently. For six years, to be exact. But now the BIG day has come, and The Lost Symbol is finally here. The sequel to The Da Vinci Code is sure to be a blockbuster.

What's the story about? Well, The Lost Symbol has been kept under extremely tight security until today, but just by looking at the cover, which was made public four weeks ago, the true Dan Brown fan can immediately tell that the book is filled with history, art, politics, architecture, religion, conspiracy theory and philosophy. Murder and mystery are in there, too.

The story is clearly set in Washington, DC, because the cover shows the Capitol Building and the Washington Monument. It also shows Freemason symbols, including the Latin motto Ordo Ab Chao — "Order out of Chaos". One of Dan Brown's central points in The Lost Symbol seems to be that the United States was created by a brilliant group of men, many of whom — including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin — were Freemasons. They were passionately interested in Enlightenment ideas, but also in the Egypt of the pharaohs, the Old Testament of the Jews, the Roman Empire and the European Renaissance.

According to an English saying, one should never judge a book by its cover — but I have. Don't call me on Thursday, as I'll be reading The Lost Symbol all day.