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Title: Angels & Demons by Dan Brown ISBN: 0-671-02736-0 Publisher: Pocket Star Pub. Date: 26 June, 2001 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.86 (701 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A true barnburner!
Comment: Next to Britt Gillette's "Conquest of Paradise", this is the best book I've read in a long time. I'm a first time Dan Brown reader but I'm hooked! I stayed up all night and didn't quit until I finished, blurry eyed and sleepy. I found myself believing every word and had to stop and remember that it's just fiction! I was amazed at the inside information about the Vatican (especially the library), and I finally got out a map and books from my trip to Rome to see if I could find all the churches. Anti-matter, illuminati, choosing a pope - all of it was fascinating. When I finished, I had to laugh thinking about the fact they never ate, slept or made comfort stops and neither could I. The ending was a total surprise! Anyone who enjoys non-stop action and information shouldn't miss this one.
Rating: 4
Summary: Angels & Demons
Comment: Dan Brown is at it again, some say that this book is full of mistakes and wasn't edited the way a book should be. But, looking beyond a few mistakes and you have a book that will hold you on the edge of your chair. A high tech thriller that seems to bounce from one place to the next keeping the reader holding on to book and finding it hard to put it down. A must read- Larry Hobson Author- The Day Of The Rose
Rating: 3
Summary: "Dum" but fun: a book to hate and love
Comment: This is a book to both hate and love, despise and enjoy, for it is quite literally sophomoric: wise in the themes that it tackles but moronic in the way in which it handles them.
The major weaknesses of the book are its poorly-developed and one-dimensional characters, its host of plot implausibilities, and its legion of factual mistakes in geography, history, theology, ecclesiology, art, and foreign languages (to name but a few areas). My favorite goof in the book comes on page 122 (of the paperback edition), where the author mistakingly uses the Latin word "Dum" (which means "while") for "Deum" ("God"). I normally would regard this as a mere typo missed by a careless editor (if there even was an editor); but in light of the many other mistakes in Latin and Italian in the book, my suspicion is that the author just didn't know any better. Such amateurish errors are more than matched by the book's many factual errors, which make the claims of some that there is much substantial knowledge that can be gleaned from this "well-researched" book both astonishing and sad.
The worst ongoing weakness of the book, however, is its utter implausibility. Introduced early on is a plane that travels (for no apparent reason) at an incredible Mach 15, which is the approximate speed that the characters would have to move to accomplish all that they do in the allotted eleven hours (counting from the protagonist's landing in Geneva). For example, Professor Langdon does in mere minutes by means of incredibly lucky finds and great intuitive leaps (and in what must be the world's most complicated and idiosyncratic library) research that would take any other professional scholar weeks, months, or years to accomplish. This is the same brilliant academic who earlier, together with the crack minds of the Swiss Guard, was unable to figure out that their own crucial, stolen wireless camera (and the destructive device on which it was focused) could be located simply and quickly by isolating its transmitting frequency, which they had to know, and triangulating on its signal. Later in the novel, this mental giant also thinks it is a good idea to sneak up on a ruthless, professional assassin whose feet are firmly planted on terra firma by climbing waist-deep into a nearby fountain, pointing a gun at him, and saying "Don't move." Still later, having (of course) narrowly escaped being drowned in that incident, this brilliant Harvard professor tries virtually the same approach, only this time, fortunately, without the water . . . but, unfortunately, without the gun either. As another example, I challenge the reader to try to imagine all of the events described as happening between 11:39 p.m. and midnight, or even the ground supposedly covered in the process: from the steps of the basilica, to its subterranean bowels (with a pause to kneel and pray), back to the surface, to a helicopter and an altitude of 2 to 3 miles. Absurd -- except, perhaps, at Mach 15!
But the novel really "jumps the shark," as they say, in the last sixty pages or so, where an ill-founded and ridiculous plot twist occurs that is an insult to any intelligent reader. Why the author feels the need to jerk his audience around in this way and just there is beyond me. He has already demanded a willful suspension of disbelief of enormous (some would say biblical) proportions.
For all of its multitudious flaws, however, I hate to admit that enjoyed reading this stupid book. I think a part of the fun was in trying to anticipate the next "Dum" mistake or new demand on the reader's already strained credulity the author would make. Would I recommend the book? To a person with time on their hands who would like an easy, mindless, action-packed romp, sure. For a more mature reader interested in well-researched and slick Catholic ecclesial-theological intrigue, however, I would recommend dusting off an old Morris West or Irving Wallace novel. If this book is any indication, Dan Brown can't (so to speak) hold a candle to the likes of them.
To those who declare that this book is the best they have read, either ever or in a long time, I would say: "De gustibus non disputandum." That means "There's no accounting for taste," though Brown, I suspect, would translate it: "It's no use arguing about the wind." Mercy.
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Title: The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown ISBN: 0385504209 Publisher: Doubleday Pub. Date: 18 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Deception Point by Dan Brown ISBN: 0671027387 Publisher: Pocket Pub. Date: 26 November, 2002 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Digital Fortress : A Thriller by Dan Brown ISBN: 0312263120 Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin Pub. Date: 05 May, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Holy Blood, Holy Grail by MICHAEL BAIGENT, RICHARD LEIGH, HENRY LINCOLN ISBN: 0440136482 Publisher: Dell Pub. Date: 15 January, 1983 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom ISBN: 0786868716 Publisher: Hyperion Pub. Date: 23 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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