Rating: 
Summary: Bad Manners
Review: Much of this book is based on the work of Picknett & Price (Templar Revelations, 1977). Inter alia, it was they who first proposed that Mary Magdalene might be found in The Last Supper, and whose first Chapter is called, "The Secret Code of Leonardo da Vinci'. Surely it would have been polite for Dan Brown to acknowledge their work rather than passing off the idea as his own?I would have though that Dan Brown might owe them at least an apology? If not, the words "shameless rip-off" spring to mind!
Rating: 
Summary: ¿a pop sclockmeister looking for a quick buck.
Review: This book represents such flagrant ignorance of the elements of suspense and mystery writing that it is deplorable. The main characters are so capable of easing themselves out of predicaments that there is no tension whatsoever. They could walk into the Oval Office and use a phone while discussing medieval symbology, apparently. Throw a bar of soap out the window and all of the security forces in the district will chase it. There are such an endless series of these episodes that it reads like a Monty Python plot. The keystone evidently refers to the French and English cops. Only Jim Carey could enact the exorbitant character expressions and reactions the author ties to revelations, events, and dialog. Forget the themes, a new meaning to the Holy Grail and the subjugation of feminism by the founders of Christianity. It is so pedantic in its portrayal that it is, at best, marginal. Maintaining the status quo through secret societies is portrayed as, apparently, appropriate, if shrouded by enough symbolic ritual and riddle to keep a mystic swimming. References to real questions of religious reform, feminism, the priesthood, right to life versus abortion, and so on are ignored, so as not to offend any element of the book-buying public. But there is a deep level of conspiracy and cover up evident herein! How do Doubleday and the NY Times manage to cook the books and keep this appalling pulp number one on the best seller's list week after week?
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting History Lesson- Pathetic Mystery Story
Review: This book was obviously written with the film rights in mind. it starts out with a somewhat interesting premise, but rapidly becomes completely unbelievable. The detectives and prime suspect all do things that strain my ability to suspend disbelief beyond the breaking point. The history and explanation of the hidden codes were interesting, but could probably be explained better in a straightforward and scholarly book better. The story started out unbelivable and got worse from there.
Rating:
Summary: Unbelievable
Review: This book was an easy read, thankfully, or I would have given up. It so is full of such nonsense presented as "researched, documented, historical fact" that it was really hard to stomach. The anti-Catholic bias of this nonsense reaches ridiculous proportions. I mean, come on: for the last five centuries we have been taught that the Catholic Church was evil precisely because it had PERPETUATED goddess worship in the form of the cult of Mary and the saints. Now we are supposed to believe that the Catholic Church is evil for exactly the opposite reason, that it SUPPRESSED goddess worship? I guess any stick will do, when the game at hand is Catholic-bashing. But the most disturbing thing about all this is the book's popularity! Thanks to Dan Brown, psychiatrists in North America can look forward to to treating yet another generation of "the Catholics are out to get me" paranoid delusionals.
Rating:
Summary: After all the hype - disappointment
Review: After hearing and reading about this book for a year, I finally borrowed a copy and read it. All I can say is I'm disappointed. While it began with an interesting premise, the writing was so mediocre that I finished it only so I could discuss the book with a friend who recommended it. It struck me as just an "airplane" novel - one you pick up at the airport because you're just looking for something quick and easy to pass the time. It's not even close to serious literature. I'm also scared to death there are people out there who actually believe the story. But I suppose that's all you can expect at a time when bashing the Christian Church has become an art form.
Rating:
Summary: Somethings wrong
Review: Has Dan Brown deliberately ripped off Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince's
famous 1997 investigative book
The Templar Revelation?
Judge for your selves and as will many who have read the results of 7 years
hard investigative research presented in The Templar Revelation.
It is shameless to allow the public to think that Dan Brown came up with
these ideas on his own, so I will speak out. It was L Picknett and C Prince and NOT Dan Brown that
discovered the heretical symbolism in Leonardo's paintings. In any case, Brown gets it wrong. Although
he lifts their material re The Virgin of the Rocks without acknowledgement,
he
completely misses the point. The Templar Revelation is much more shocking
than any of the stuff in Dan Browns book!!! I am SICK of breathless Brown
fans going on about his amazing discoveries.
What else can you expect from a miserable society that wants instant
gratification without effort. Look deeper and learn. Crichton E M Miller
Author
The Golden Thread of Time
Rating:
Summary: Historically inaccurate anti woman, anti Catholic bigotry
Review: The book reads poorly, the author claims he has done his research when he hasn't. He endoirses Gnostic Gospels like Thomas to support the idea that Jesus was married when he wasn't, ignoring the fact that the Gospel of Thomas says women must become men to be saved. He claims the Pope shut down the Knights Templar and persecuted them in Rome, when the historical evidence in fact says that the Pope couldn't have persecuted them from Rome because he was in France at the time and the King of France Manipulated the Pope into supressing them. The Pope wasn't the bad guy, it was the king of France etc, etc, etc, etc......ad infinitum. It is another example of a bigot, who because his bigotry is socially acceptable to an athiestic society and media that like to distort the truth, gets a way with publishing bad literature and lying about his scholarship. If some of the evil Characters were Jewish instead of Catholic no one would think it was such a great book.
Rating:
Summary: a book gone wrong - no facts - just a cheap thriller
Review: ... here is some of it Brown is right about one thing (and not much more). In the course of Christian history, few events loom larger than the Council of Nicea in 325. When the newly converted Roman Emperor Constantine called bishops from around the world to present-day Turkey, the church had reached a theological crossroads. Led by an Alexandrian theologian named Arius, one school of thought argued that Jesus had undoubtedly been a remarkable leader, but he was not God in flesh. Arius proved an expert logician and master of extracting biblical proof texts that seemingly illustrated differences between Jesus and God, such as John 14:28: "the Father is greater than I." In essence, Arius argued that Jesus of Nazareth could not possibly share God the Father's unique divinity. In The Da Vinci Code, Brown apparently adopts Arius as his representative for all pre-Nicene Christianity. Referring to the Council of Nicea, Brown claims that "until that moment in history, Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet ' a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless." In reality, early Christians overwhelmingly worshipped Jesus Christ as their risen Savior and Lord. Before the church adopted comprehensive doctrinal creeds, early Christian leaders developed a set of instructional summaries of belief, termed the "Rule" or "Canon" of Faith, which affirmed this truth. To take one example, the canon of prominent second-century bishop Irenaeus took its cue from 1 Corinthians 8:6: "Yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ." The term used here'Lord, Kyrios'deserves a bit more attention. Kyrios was used by the Greeks to denote divinity (though sometimes also, it is true, as a simple honorific). In the Greek translation of the Old Testament (the Septuagint, pre-dating Christ), this term became the preferred substitution for "Jahweh," the holy name of God. The Romans also used it to denote the divinity of their emperor, and the first-century Jewish writer Josephus tells us that the Jews refused to use it of the emperor for precisely this reason: only God himself was kyrios. The Christians took over this usage of kyrios and applied it to Jesus, from the earliest days of the church. They did so not only in Scripture itself (which Brown argues was doctored after Nicea), but in the earliest extra-canonical Christian book, the Didache, which scholars agree was written no later than the late 100s. In this book, the earliest Aramaic-speaking Christians refer to Jesus as Lord. In addition, pre-Nicene Christians acknowledged Jesus's divinity by petitioning God the Father in Christ's name. Church leaders, including Justin Martyr, a second-century luminary and the first great church apologist, baptized in the name of the triune God'Father, Son, and Holy Spirit'thereby acknowledging the equality of the one Lord's three distinct persons. The Council of Nicea did not entirely end the controversy over Arius's teachings, nor did the gathering impose a foreign doctrine of Christ's divinity on the church. The participating bishops merely affirmed the historic and standard Christian beliefs, erecting a united front against future efforts to dilute Christ's gift of salvation. go to the website to read the rest. ... Christ is the answer!
www.christianitytoday.com/history/newsletter/2003/nov7.html
Rating: 
Summary: An Exciting Page Turner!
Review: I am not one to sit down and read a 400+ page book, but I was indeed possessed to do so and I picked it up and read page one - then I was hooked! It is a fasciniating murder mystery that gripped me from the git-go. I found it to be written well - an easy read, yet it engaged my intellect. The book is well researched. I can't even begin to imagine the amount of time and effort that went into researching and writing this book! I will also tell you I loved the ending. It wasn't corny or sappy, but it felt real. It ended in a way that I was satisfied and not left wishing for a different ending. It felt good when I was done. Mr. Brown did an excellent job on this masterpiece. I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys an interesting and gripping read.
Rating:
Summary: Stupid
Review: It constantly insulted my intelligence with its constant stupidity. How can anyone possibly take a book that cites the dead sea scrolls and Disney movies as theological proof that The Holy Grail is not a grail, but a woman, seriously? I mean, Disney wasn't even alive when The Little Mermaid was made, and I really doubt that he dedicated his life to spreading the message that Christ had a blood line and was married to the holy female. ??!!
When I realized it was about the Holy Grail I suddenly saw connections with Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade. Obviously Dan Brown isn't clever enough to come up with his own Holy Grail quest without ripping off Hollywood cliches.
If you want to understand the Quest for the Holy Grail and its impact, watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail for complete historical context.
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