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Summary: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
Review: THE GOOD: The Da Vinci Code has already become a classic, sporting one of the most intricate and engrossing plots ever put to page. The story unfolds over a 24 hour period, and what a story it is! From Paris to London, the main characters are in a race against the French authorities, secret societies, and powerful religious organizations, all to break the codes revealing one of the most explosive secrets in history. It's difficult to praise such a novel without giving away pieces of the mystery, just note that if mystery is indeed what you crave, then Dan Brown's best seller will not dissapoint. The ideas presented in the novel have caused me to research the validity of some of the claims, and has provided me with a list of dozens of non-fiction books that continue the story through the theories put forth by scholars from all over the world. The secret disussed in it's pages are that powerful.THE BAD: My two bits of criticism are directed at the lack of charisma posessed by the characters in the book, and that you sometimes get the feeling that you are reading an ode to Dan Brown's education and research instead of a novel. In a book so plot oriented, it must be hard to provide really interesting characters. And that's exactly one of it's shortfalls. THE UGLY: The reactions of the characters to certain situations is rather ridiculous at times. And after discovering that much of the content/ideas came from non-fiction books already written leaves me questioning the authors creativity a bit. CONCLUSION: Buy this book. It is destined to be a classic, and will be discussed for years to come. I could fill 400+ pages of my own just reviewing this book. It opens up so many doors, leaves so many questions lingering, and provides you with an extremely entertaining read that will leave you breathless. Highly, highly recommended.
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Summary: It's All True
Review: The great thing about this awsome book is that it is ALL TRUE! It's great being able to get educated and entertained at the same time. I now know that Catholics are evil and the one true religion is paganism! These are just two of the eye opening facts revealed in this great work of literature.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting themes, predictable story
Review: The great thing about this book is how it brings to light how women have been neglected in th history of the Catholic Church. It is worth reading just for the education you get in that. The plot is the thriller-in-a-day variety that the author has used time and again. It works, but it's hurried and formulaic. I'm afraid when they make the movie (and they are sure to) they'll leave in all the action and take out the meat - Who is Mary, who is Mary Magdelene, what is their significance? Sigh.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book!
Review: The hero of our story Robert Langdon is in Paris on business hrecieves a phone call thar curator of the Louvre has been murdered.Langdon had been scheduled to meet with the curator that night but the curator failed to show.A ciphered message is found on the floor near the body.Langdon teams up with French Cryptologist Sophie Neveu to try to solve this mystery.Many of the clues lie within the works of DaVinci.
Langdon discovers that the curator was involved with the Priory of Sion a secret society whose members include Sir Isaac
Newton,Botticelli,Victor Hugo,and Da Vinci.He believes that this society is hunting for an ancient secret.
Neveu and Langdon race across Paris and London trying to out wit a secret powerbroker.His identity will shock you.The ending of the book will shock you as well.
This is an excellent book that I enjoyed reading.It is definitely classified as a page turner.
Rating: 
Summary: Intrigued by Da Vinci Code? Don't be. Please.
Review: The idea wasn't bad. But the writing is horrendous. And the dialogue - dear God. If you're looking for a real intellectual thriller, don't despair: Umberto Eco, Arturo Perez-Reverte and Sebastien Japrisot provide some of the very best, and they actually do research. Nikos Kazantzakis' "Last Temptation of Christ" is brilliant for those interested in alternative theories of Jesus. And Strunk and White's "Elements of Style" is an old classic that Dan Brown should have glanced over once or twice.
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Summary: Interesting ideas wrapped up in thin thriller...
Review: The ideas posed by The Da Vinci Code are new to me, but as I research now I see they have been around for some time. Dan Brown does a good job bringing these ideas into the mainstream and gives us all a little more to ponder when it comes to religion and just what we believe.
The plot, however, motivated me to look elsewhere for a better thriller. Elmore Leonard and James Patterson have taken care of the for me. The beginning of the book starts out very cliche with the phone ringing and waking up the main charachter. Maybe if it started with Langdon tracing the medallions on his way to the Louvre to meet with Sauniere not knowing he had been killed already. But it wasn't until he got to the Louvre is when I considered the story to actually begin. Some people may think that the story takes a break-neck pace or a non-stop plunge into the grail quest it is, but I thought the story just drug whenever any of the characters would recall something in the past. I realize that the reminiscing was essential to the different plot threads, but maybe he could have done it in a more of an explanation method instead of the "I remember when..." method.
The characters are another bright spot of the book. Langdon and Sopie stand out to most, but it was Teabing the caught my attention the most. Brown did a great job capturing the British feel for him and some of his lines still run around in my head, including the draw bridge troll feeling I got when Langdon and Sofie first came to see him at his home. The only character actions I didn't like was the relationship between Langdon and Sophie at the end. It seems like most writers fall into that two people involved in a stressful and close situation often fall in love. Why can't the two just stay friends?
Overall The Da Vinci Code was an enjoyable book and I would recommend it to others, but if you want a more satisfying thriller, look to Leonard or Patterson.
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Summary: Timely Read during the Harmonic Concordance
Review: The imagery that Dan Brown conjures up is quite vivid throughout the entire novel. I commend the author for helping people to awaken to other customs, rituals, belief systems and hierarchy within organizations. From 8-NOV through 23-NOV, celestial bodies will form the Magen David above the planet Earth. This symbol is discussed in detail, throughout the novel. I wonder if the author is trying to help people understand that the "Star of David" is not just for the Jewish people. Dan Brown references this symbol being used by the ancients before Judaism. The subtle reference to the 325A.D. conference of priests and the casting out of certain Divine Teachings (like reincarnation) was thoughtful, historically accurate, and might help Catholic Christians better understand the levels of hell. I very much enjoyed this. What's next, Dan Brown?
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Summary: FASCINATING!!!!!
Review: The information in this book is absolutely fascinating. Information that would shatter the foundations of what churches have been teaching for centuries. Read this book! It will leave you wanting to find out more about the Holy Grail and the strong possibility that Jesus was a mortal man. Anyone who gave a negative rating to this book is either uneducated or closed-minded. This is a brilliant book, with a movie to be directed by Ron Howard on its way.
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Summary: "Pure Genius" is right!
Review: The inside cover of The DaVinci Code says "This is pure genius." This couldn't be closer to the truth. In an incredible show of creativity, imagination, and cunning, Dan Brown brings to life an ancient secret the likes of which I have never seen before. To be concise, this is the most interesting book I have ever read - and it has everything a book of its type needs: action, suspense, mystery and everything between. The characters are fanatastic and dynamic, the plot has a blissful mixture of action and information, and the puzzles and codes are unbelievably clever. The way that Mr. Brown ties these seemingly unrelated facts (every bit of information about history and art is true) into a single novel is utterly stunning. Dan Brown is many steps ahead of today's writers. Read this book... I promise you will love it!
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Summary: Wolf in sheep's clothing
Review: The Knights Templar, the Rosicrucians, and many masons have kept alive among their secret beliefs that the Merovingian line of Frankish kings from the early Middle Ages were descended directly from Jesus. To justify this outlandish claim, they must profess that Jesus did not die on the cross but survived it, and went on to live a much longer life, married Mary Magdalene and had children with her, from whom the Merovingians supposedly descend. There isn't any historic evidence for this. (The Merovingians were replaced on the Frankish throne in the 8th century AD by the Carolingians, chief among them Charlemagne.) In this novel a proponent of that nonsense has created a popular vehicle with which to attempt to deceive the public into thinking that this thesis is true. Yet it flies in the face of all historic context. From the report about Jesus contained in the writings of Flavius Josephus to the bald fact of hundreds of people who knew Jesus and witnessed his death, resurrection or ascension, and who gave their lives for Him, the contemporaries of Jesus who were familiar with the facts bear tacit testament contrary to this slander of Him. Nor does it square with early Frankish history. There are quite a few writings about Jesus that never made it into the canon of Scripture. When you have read enough of them, then you realize that they are mostly a lot of fantasies about Jesus or those connected to Him. There are reasons they are not in the Bible. They have more in common with second party spinoffs of Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice, for example, written by people who loved the original so much that they wrote their own fantasy continuations of the story. This scurrilous novel defames Jesus in every possible fashion. In a back handed way, it contends that He lied when He said that He would be killed and then would rise from the dead. It purports that all of His disciples lied in their representations of Him. It says that the crucifixion was a lie, that Easter was a lie, that His ascension was a lie, and thus that His promise to return is a lie. Either everything essential to His coming into the world was a lie or what this book proposes is a lie, couched in novel form. Something else Jesus said is that Satan is the Father of Lies (John 8). Open your eyes and don't be duped by this well crafted lie.
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