Rating: 
Summary: A good page-turner
Review: This book is an entertaining thriller, a real page-turner. It's enjoyable, a good read if you take it as such. And since it came out, it's been wildly popular. Some of its strengths: It has one cliff-hanging scene after another. It has colorful characters, even if it lacks any deep character development. Except for a brief epilogue, all the action takes place over a 24-hour period, and most of that in the course of one sleepless night. Important scenes are on every tourist's map--notably the Louvre in Paris and Westminster Abbey in London--and some are in less well known but equally accessible tourist stops. Previous visitors will recognize the descriptions, and I'm sure the book will inspire new visitors to conduct their own investigations. (It's happened before: "Angela's Ashes" brought the tourists to Limerick in Ireland; the Brother Caedfeld mysteries brought them to Shrewsbury in England; and so on.) There also is some interesting art history and interpretation. And the book is full of puzzles and riddles, some on the surface, some more deeply buried, some solved in the text, and some left to the reader to find and solve on his/her own.But this omits the most sensational element of the book. I don't want to give too much away. But here's a hint. One of the key characters is a Sir Leigh Teabing. And along the way, the book mentions a book, "Holy Blood, Holy Grail," by Michael Baigent, Henry Lincoln, and Richard Leigh. Get it?
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book, good lead in to more reading
Review: This book is an excellent introduction to the "paranoid historical thriller" genre. The material is easy to read, and a wonderful page turner, but may have been altered for readibility purposes. There are a lot of knee-jerk reviews on this book, in both directions. There are the fundamentalist christians, who instantly assume that Dan Brown is trying to ruin the Christian church, and there are people who have heard that the book is excellent, and just agree with everyone else. I like to think of this book as the Harry Potter for adults. It is a great read, and it introduces the reader to other great books in the genre, such as "Holy Blood, Holy Grail," and its sequel "The Messianic Legacy." Things that, in "Da Vinci," aren't very well justified, are looked at in much greater detail, and perhaps might help people who don't think that "Da Vinci" has any historical background. Overall, I'd recommend this book to anyone with an open mind, or even very religious people, who, as noted in Holy Blood, Holy Grail, are secure enough in their convictions to listen to take another, different, look at their faith.
Rating: 
Summary: Kept my interest, but ......
Review: This book is an exciting read, but the ending was so disappointing that it took away from its promise. At the end, all of the puzzles and games to figure things out seem nothing but stupid. I enjoyed Defenders of the Holy Grail, another novel with similiar themes, much more.
Rating: 
Summary: Thought provoking
Review: This book is an incredible work of fiction that not only entertains based on its own merits, but also makes you fight not to go find the art works and check things out for yourself! This was a book that I simply could not put down once I started. I'll be checking out Brown's other books now too.
Rating:
Summary: Educational!
Review: This book is an interesting read! I am not a very religious person, mainly because modern christianity just doesn't make sense to me. I understood why after reading this book. The story is a good one. I feel like the characters and their actions were a little too predictable but I found the knowledge of religion and history in the book to be extremely fascinating. I learned things that I wasn't aware of which have spurred me on to read more about the Priory of Sion, Opus Dei and the Knights Templer. Fascinating material!
Rating: 
Summary: groan
Review: This book is awful, simply awful. I glanced back at some of the other customer reviews, and I am incredulous that some readers think this is a good thriller. The characters are ridiculous and without any resemblance to real people. The plot is ludicrous from beginning to end, in too many ways to even list. Suspense? How can you care after the first hundred pages of this never-ending chase? Some reviewers complain about the concocted history that underpins the plot, while others try to justify it as "hey, it's fiction, whatever he wants to put in is okay." Sorry, but The Da Vinci Code doesn't even make it as a competent story. As for the book's research, it's too pathetic to be an "indictment" of Christianity. More like an indictment of the author. The book this most reminds me of is "Chariots of the Gods" -- the same kind of loony fabrications.
Rating:
Summary: ignorance is bliss
Review: This book is awful. I mean, religious, crime, detective, suspense, thriller novels, those sort of books are the ones i like. But one's that are based of fallacies in history, plain lies, and even HERESIES, it really makes me wonder what sort of book this is supposed to be. Is it a serious book? Is it a joke on society? Is it just to provoke a reaction? I have a friend at school who makes a habit of insulting religions with false information, and he is a twit, and held in disgust by most of my peers, even the atheists and gnostics! This book is bound to confuse people, especially those who will take that "facts" as facts. It is a dangerous book! None-the-less, there shall probably be a great documentary made about the complete lunacy of this book, which i will watch with open eyes. I just pray for all those who take the word as fact. I am not a fanatic who wishes for "all those who read this book to burn is hell", i do not practice that sort of vengeful hatred, i just pray that people who read this book, will not take the information on face-value. That they will take the information and find out the truth before spreading lies about Leonardo Da Vinci, or the Church, or English history!
Please, just read this book with suspicion, or at least, regard it as a book, NOT a historical document!
Rating:
Summary: Buyer beware! An anti-Catholic novel.
Review: This book is awful. It isn't just the agnostic-to-pagan religious theories pumped out through the fictional hero (I know, I know, it's a novel!) - Jesus as a Jewish reformer only, not the divine person he claimed to be, married to Mary Magdalene with whom he had a child of whom the hero's girl friend turns out to be a decendant (wow!); the alleged conspiracy of the evil Catholic Church to suppress the Magdalene story; the goddess worship; the alleged fraudulence of the Bible at the hands of - you guessed it - the Catholic Church; the favorable presentation of obscene pagan cult sex orgies. No all those would just make it one more anti-Christian rant. But it is the implausible, James Bond action story line, the jejune dialogue and much more other nonsense that makes it a poor work of fiction. It is a sad commentary on American writing and taste that this trash has been a best seller for many weeks. I expect that the book is already being scripted for the screen as the latest action epic of an heroic American battling the evil international forces - in this case the Catholic Church and Opus Dei. Brown portrays Opus Dei, the Catholic lay apostolate, slanderously as a fanatical, even violent group. The primary evil person is an unstable, violent member of Opus Dei, a former criminal under the direction of the head of Opus Dei; hardly the kind of agent anyone would use even if they were a member! In his narrative Brown also accuses the Catholic Church of suppressing the female "divinity" (Mary Magdalene) and oppressing women generally, not they they fared better elsewhere. This seems odd in the light of the many female saints and the exalted position of Mary, the mother of Jesus in Catholic doctrine, a teaching for which Catholics are often criticized by other enemies of the Church coming from a different angle. The picture of the Catholic Church in this book is a veritable modern version of the "Maria Monk" stories of Know Nothing times. I would laugh it off except that wiser persons than I have said that anti-Catholicism is the "last acceptable prejudice in America". Can you imagine a novel accusing the Jews of such conspiracies? It would never be published. The story line will likely appeal to Hollywood but they will have to tone down the more blatant Catholic bashing and cult sex promotion and add a few explicit sex scenes which are mercifully absent from the book. This is a snap for Hollywood. Brown even suggests that the tweedy Harvard professor hero actually looks a lot like Harrison Ford who regularly appears in such films. Hint, hint. I grudgingly gave the book one star because it is very easy to read due to its short chapters and scene switch-backs as well as its interesting travelogues of Paris and London. The bad stuff is in the serious content: the French bashing and English fawning and implausible story line. I can well imagine the book being popular with the Bush administration. Casper Weinberger actually wrote a glowing review of a Tom Clancy action novel for the Wall Street Journal. Above all the book is bad because of implausible story line which crushes it for anyone above 15 years of intellectual age. One example: the action takes place over a period of 48 to 72 hours (it is never quite clear so rapidly does it move from place to place) with the hero being awakened at the start without sleep so we can add maybe another 12 hours for him. During the ensuing frenetic chasing around and violence the hero and his female companion never sleep, never eat and engage in constant violent action. At the end of all they still appear as an "attractive" couple as Brown tells us and mentally sharp too, working out the various puzzles which are part of the story line. Personally, I would have needed a nap and a shave at least. This is second rate Tom Clancy stuff except that Clancy was more realistic. Again, in order to keep the reader in suspense about the nature of the Holy Grail, the object of the frantic search and violence, Brown resorts to such childish dodges as saying that the hero just didn't have time to explain things to his female companion. She doesn't complain. Please! The book is full of this kind of thing. Brown has done some reading about Church history, the Knights Templars and secret societies and relentlessly pushes an anti-Catholic line in interpreting historic events. I have no idea of his own religious background (agnostic if his hero here speaks for him) but there is a danger that gullible readers might take his views as real history. The hero is forever saying that his religious views are backed by substantial scholarship and freely associates the names of famous persons with them. An example is the history of the Knights Templars. This is a subject of debate to this day and Catholic and non-Catholic scholars can be found on both sides of their story. Some think they were unjustly suppressed by religious and secular forces of their time jealous of the power and vast holdings. Others take the opposite position, saying that theu had indeed become corrupt and unfaithful after a noble if robust military beginning. Brown presents them in a favorable light as the antecedents of his real heroes, the Priory of Sion, a secret masonic type organization opposed to the Catholic Church, having pagan overtones and dedicated to keeping the Magdalene proofs hidden from the evil Vatican, which of course wishes to destroy them to protect the Jesus story. If true it sort of makes one lean to side of the suppressors of the Knights, but never mind. There are many examples of this kind of "history" in the book - which I know is after all a work of fiction, but in a country which learns its history from Hollywood films and TV this is a real concern, much bigger of course than this book. Some of the reviews already illustrate the point.
Rating: 
Summary: Based On Occult / Satanism
Review: This book is based on occult / satanic ideas but I didn't realize it when I first read it. For example it tells the origin of the horrible pentagram symbol. It says the pentagram traces the route of the planet Venus in outer space and has sexual implications. That makes sense. In another part old 'grand pere' (the heroine's grandfather) is down in the secret dungeon making out with someone during some type of ritual. The plot is heavily based on ideas taken from the Gnostic gospels which weren't included in the bible. It's a mystery novel which implies that Jesus Christ was married to Mary Magdalene and this has been covered up by the Churh all this time to preserve the Church's control over everyone. But heros like old grand pere have been struggling to keep the blood line intact. Mainly the book drags Christ's name through the mud in favor of other sexual gods (godesses actually). After you read this book you may find at night that you feel uneasy and afraid for some reason but you don't know why. Part of the book's popularity is undoubtedy related to Leonardo da Vinci who was an enigmatic and mysterious person. Da Vinci represents somewhat of a mystery that people are still trying to figure out. Perhaps people realize that in a way there really is a secret da Vinci code. There is but it's not anything close to what this book says. Jeff Marzano
Rating:
Summary: Inaccurate and Not Well Written
Review: This book is better than Angels and Demons, but still a highly flawed work. The Da Vinci Code suffers from heavy handed foreshadowing, contrived conveniences, cardboard characters, bad pacing and (again--just like in Angels and Demons) incorrect facts which skew history, ignore the laws of physics, and force the reader to suspend disbelief past the point of acceptability. Most scary (and the reason for 1 star rather than 2 or 3) are the large numbers of readers who believe EVERY word that Dan Brown writes and quote the book like it's a non-fiction work. Read it if you must, but remember that it's fiction....
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