The Da Vinci Code

Rating:
Summary: After 300 pages forget it!
Review: The first 300 pages of this novel were exciting and as suspenseful as FOCAULT'S PENDULUM. At a critical juncture the story fell apart. I am very disappointed!

Rating:
Summary: Anti-Catholic, neo-feminist silliness
Review: The first few chapters of The Da Vinci Code drew me in to the story. It was fast paced but still full of details that make a great mystery. I love how Brown interweaves history in to the story. What could be better than a modern mystery that involves real historical figures like Da Vinci, Newton and Christ? Add a legendary mystery like the Holy Grail and I was totally hooked.

And then it begins. Christianity is painted as *the* villain and not just a few weirdoes in the extreme Catholic cult, Opus Dei. Soon Brown's novel begins to sound like an Oliver Stone conspiracy script. "OK", I thought, "it's part of the novel intended to advance the plot." But as I continue to read, a new voice begins to intrude into the narrative, distracting me from the story like an annoying buzzing in my ear. It is not the voice of any character, not even the voice of the narrator. It's the author, on his soapbox, trying to sell me something. His anti-Christian rhetoric is no longer a vehicle to advance the story. Sadly, now it is the story that has become a vehicle for bashing Christianity. Brown ties to be subtle, hoping hide his mesage as Da Vinci's hid Mary Magdalene in his painting of "The Last Supper." But, in the end, the book becomes something less than a novel, and more like propaganda. Try a few Googles and you will find that this novel has fed the fires of Christian bashing. People are quoting it as a trustworthy source of factual information about Christian history. But it's just a novel right? The author can't be blamed if people take a work of fiction and believe it as fact-unless that was the author's intent.

Both in the novel and in subsequent interviews Brown makes it clear that he is a true believer concerning this 2000 year Christian conspiracy. In an interview on New Hampshire Public Radio, Brown said only the characters and the plot involving them were fiction--everything else is historical fact. Well maybe he's stretching it a little? One small example is that there are 673 panes of glass in the Pyramid at the Louvre, not 666. Hmmm, I wonder what other "facts" are wrong? But hey, in a novel the author should be free to fudge historical facts to color the story--unless the author has a hidden agenda, or an axe to grind. Clearly, promoting the book as historically factual is disingenuous at best.

Does Brown have an axe to grind? It's hard to conclude that from a single novel. But read his earlier book, "Angels and Demons" and it becomes clear that he has a distaste for Catholic Church. Perhaps he has good reasons for those feelings. If so, he is free to speak out against the church. But I would rather he did it openly rather than putting that message into his mystery novels.

To quote Michael Medved (Washington Post), "Yeah, the Da Vinci code is nonsense. Read an analysis of its neo-feminist silliness in that bastion of reactionary Catholicism, the New York Times" (see NY Times Book Reviews, Sunday, August 24, 2003)

Rating:
Summary: Christians Beware
Review: The first half of the book is well-written and very interesting. Beyond that, I couldn't finish what I thought was a great thriller. In good conscience, I couldn't keep reading beyond the blasphemy of Christianity and my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I sent my copy to the dump.

Rating:
Summary: OVER-RATED
Review: The first half of the book progresses rather well. It is suspenseful and you might not put it down until well past your bedtime... but only the first night. It contains little tidbits of arcane knowledge, the kind of which you can show-off with. Like for example, the author points out that Leonardo was totally in touch with his feminine side, gay in fact, and also that he painted-in Mary Magdalene (Jesus' supposed wife) on Jesus' right-hand side in The Last Supper. Go ahead and look, there IS a female there! A master artist wouldn't make a mistake like that on accident.

On page 4 you read of a mysterious killer shooting the curator of du musée du Louvre in the belly with one bullet. The killer tries to shoot him again but his gun is now empty. Why is it empty? Anyway he leaves the old man there to die and walks right out of the most famous museum in the world with no problem.
So the dying old man starts scrambling to leave clues about his secret before he croaks. The author tells us that it is very very important that the curator carry on his knowledge or else the old man's secret society will be no more. That's the bait. And so I read every chance I got, even though the book ran dry after the first hundred pages. Then on page 444, near the end, I read that another cult member says that the death of the leaders of Freemasonry is not a big deal because... "There are always those waiting to move up and rebuild" Well, you can imagine my disappointment after reading that!

If there is no race against time to save the curator's secret then why was I made to feel anxious?!?

Rating:
Summary: Good beginning, horrible ending
Review: The first half of the book was great. The second half was horrible. Too contrived, to predictable, how could they not get the codes? The first thing I did was look at the writing in the mirror because the script flowed right-to-left instead of left-to-right. How could they not get that? And as for the last code, I got it with about 2 minutes of looking at it, but these guys have to go all over Europe trying to figure it out. The characters are completely unbelievable. They are all supercharacters, then they can't decipher the codes!

And the very end was moronic. If the grail really was where Langdon thought it was, don't you think SOME construction worker, electrician, etc etc who had to move the thing would wonder why all they went to all that effort and there was nothing on display? Of COURSE someone would have talked. And wouldn't someone, somewhere, have made the connection that the leader of the Louvre and most power secret society and the leader of the church where the grail is supposed to be hid were married? Just dumb.

This book gets two stars because Brown can write coherent sentences, but as for any semblance of plausibility it gets 0 stars.

Rating:
Summary: Wow--Fun & Interesting
Review: The first quesiton I asked myself on finishing this book was: how did I miss Angels & Demons, Dan Brown's first book featuring Robert Langdon, the protagonist of The Da Vinci Code? I enjoyed this novel so much--more than I expected to--that I was disappointed that I didn't have all the background.

Seriously, what's not to like about this book?--a smart and engaging main character surrounded by a cast of equally engaging friends and enemies; secret societies and the secret lives of historical figures like Newton and Victor Hugo; a plot pushed forward by decipherable clues as simple as anagrams and as complex as the hidden meaning of Da Vinci art; the meaning of religious "artifacts" like the Holy Grail; the meaning of religion itself. It all makes for an irresistible combination. And Brown, though not perhaps the most adept prose stylist, does a good job of getting us through the twists and turns in an enjoyable fashion.

Of course, comfortable in my catholicism, I enjoy speculative novels like this. I can wonder about the truth of religion without feeling my religion or myself is being attacked. Plus, my reading has made me familiar already with many of the arguments Brown makes. But if you are the type of person who is uncomfortable with writing that brings into question some of the basic tenets of Christianity, stay away from this novel. You will not enjoy it. But if you want a thrilling ride that also will make you stop and think about some things you thought you knew, this is a book to be read.

Rating:
Summary: May take some discipline to finish, but well worth it.
Review: The flow of the story was a bit choppy and occasionally drained my interest to continue. However, I managed to finish and I must say that the pace picks up around the last 150 pages. It's a great lesson in symbols and code breaking intertwined with art and biblical history involving secret societies. Overall, it is intellectually worthwhile and entertaining.

Rating:
Summary: Bah
Review: The Gods of Eden has better history than this. That one does actually include the UFOs.

Rating:
Summary: TREV NV Z YIVZP!
Review: The good news is that it is a heck of a fun read. The author's storytelling skills keep the reader in suspense page after page. And every little detail counts, so it's fun to anticipate and see how it is used later in the book. Plus, the nuggets of what the Amazon review describes as "esoteria" should help readers in Trivial Pursuit, Jeopardy, and cocktail parties.

The bad news is that, as Langdon and Teabing themselves admit, the conspiracy stuff is old news. The "explosive truth" that is guarded as a secret has been alleged for many centuries and has never received popular or academic acceptance, and this is only its latest incarnation and retelling. The author's "genius" is in weaving merely 3 or 4 accepted facts (which he lists in the introduction to the book), with pagan and neopagan beliefs, anti-Catholic conspiracy theories, Knights Templar lore and legend, liberal feminist theology, postmodern critiques, and so on.

I sure hope nobody (not one person) takes the allegations in this book for gospel truth. It's a great airplane/airport/vacation read, accompanied with lots of hype. And nothing more.

*review title is in atbash, which is one of the parlor games referred to in the book

Rating:
Summary: I got good news, and I got bad news.
Review: The good news: excellent research, interesting premise, intruiging settings, thought -provoking trvia. The bad news: predictable plot, mundane dialouge, tepid characters, one- page "chapters", and an unrealistic timeline. It's difficult to identifiy with the protagonist, who is suddently expected to display an ability towards committment, when no prior examples are shown. Even the antagonists, appear to have come from nowhere. Who are these people ? Other characters appear, make gestures that suggest an actual interest in events, and then walk away or disappear as if recovering from a fugue state. Even foils have to be developed. I was under the impression that references would be made to several of Da Vinci's works, but this was not so.

Overall, it is apparent that there are some aspects of history that demand to remain in the past. To transplant them into the present day renders them awkward in a way that is worsened by forced attempts to surround it with a contrived plot. After all is said and done, the reader is still asking "so what?" I better stop here: the more I write, the more stars I end up taking away.