Rating: 
Summary: Excellent and entertaining. Will make a good movie.
Review: It's important to remember that this is "fiction" and isn't supposed to be a historical research paper on Christianity and Christ. It's fiction. It's a very good read. It's supposed to be and is a fun book. If you are looking for historical reference material...go to the Vatican website.The ending could have been better...but I still give the book 5 stars for entertainment value. I enjoyed it very much. It would make a good movie.
Rating: 
Summary: Awesome
Review: Great book, very provocative. It held my interest from begginig to end.
Rating: 
Summary: Readers Can Do Much Better Than This
Review: The overwhelming popularity of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code is puzzling to many of us who care about good writing, and who have devoted a lifetime to the study of Judaism and Christianity.
First of all, Mr. Brown's writing is poor, even by popular mystery novel standards.
Second, the supposedly-remarkable discoveries concerning Jesus' life that are at the center of The Da Vinci Code are quite well known to people who have read beyond the New Testament for their religious history.
Perhaps the popularity of The Da Vinci Code stems from a newly-popular interest in developing a deeper understanding of all things Jewish, Christian and biblical. If this is the case--and I hope it is--I would strongly recommend that readers save their time and money, avoid reading The Da Vinci Code, and instead, read one or more of the following:
1. The Genius of Genesis by Dennis Shulman.
2. Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time by Marcus Borg.
3. Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Richard Leigh and others.
Rating:
Summary: Pagan-Inspired Fiction Told as "History"
Review: This is a drawn out, poorly written piece of fiction portraying a plethora of pagan opinions as historical fact. It's every
"Woman's Book Club" dream as the plot lures them in with references to the "Sacred Feminine". Written for a mass-market audience, it attempts to discredit not only the Catholic Church, but all Christians, and even Jews and Buddhists. It mocks the very idea of "Faith" in anything, besides the ridiculous notion of a "Sacred Feminine." The author's interpretations of da Vinci's art are distorted and far-reaching as well. Unfortunately, lay readers presumably cannot detect the misinformation and trust in Brown's pagan-inspired "history lesson." He even tries to persuade his readers that the Satanic Pentagram is a beautiful misunderstood symbol of femininity that should be respected. Please spare yourself from this blasphemous piece of trash. For, even if you are not offended by the notion that Christianity was simply a political trick of Constantine, the writing itself is didactic and boring. Sadly, the book has remained a number one bestseller for months because Brown takes the reader down interesting intellectual paths (on which I assume the average reader has never ventured). This instantly excites the ignorant and unsuspecting reader lacking the educational background to see through his faulty logic. So, while any person endowed with a shred of intelligence should not be spiritually affected by this book, at worst, its 449 pages will amount to a colossal waste of time.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent. I could not put this book down.
Review: I bought and started reading this book in the Dallas airport. I continued to read on the plane....all the way to another airport (where I made my connection) and then onward to Baltimore. I could not put the book down. It made the long waits in the airports and the flights "Fly Right By" ! My flight attendant on the way home asked me how I liked the book (she was interested in reading it too) so I gave it to her. Hopefully she'll be able to put it down long enough to tend to her duties on the airplane. :-) Excellent piece of work!!!! 5 Stars!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Formulaic, and completely implausible
Review: Mind candy for the literally challenged. The title above says it all.
Rating:
Summary: why all the hype?
Review: I was very excited to read this book, as I had heard many excellent things about it. However, everything about it after just a few chapters was disappointing. The characters were flat, the plot was highly predictable, and the writing style left much to be desired. My only guess is that this book is selling on the sensationalism of the secret society. If you're looking for worthwhile reading, this isn't it.
Rating:
Summary: Dan Brown's fourth and best
Review: Dan Brown's fourth and best book
This mystery thriller doesn't disappoint as it examines how history might have been rewritten if certain historical events had played out differently. Multi-layered, the book takes readers on a trip through a puzzle that requires a different set of operating instructions for each of the levels. And here's the fun part: when you've finished the book, you can go further in the quest via a website!
Superb.
Rating:
Summary: Ironically smug. Disappointing.
Review: While the subjects upon which the plot of this book are built are interesting ones, this book fails to live up to the great potential for a truly suspenseful and interesting story that could be created about them. I think Dan Brown makes a fool of himself by trying to sound intelligent and knowledgeable with unnecessary flourishes, only to follow up by spelling everything out so deliberately that he insults the reader's intelligence. It makes him come off like a pompous professor, and not a very bright one at that. Similarly, the dumbed-down dialogue undermines the intellectual potential of the subjects. I laughed out loud when someone described as a high vatican official actually said "the Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away." He should have followed up with "Bummer -- eh, dude?" In parts it reads like a cheap romance novel -- you can tick off the steps in the characters' romance, which are just stuck in awkwardly throughout the book, and are only there so the book can end as a schmaltzy and uncompelling love story. I'll admit that it's a quick and engaging read, but there were too many times when I thought "okay! I get it! can we PLEASE move on?!" And while it kept me busy during a long flight, by the end I felt cheated.
Rating:
Summary: Incredible revelations!... Not!
Review: With much hoopla and praise behind it, and an intriguing concept for the plot, I picked up Brown's The Da Vinci Code with enthusiasm. The premise is that there is an incredible secret that the Catholic Church will stop at nothing to suppress, and warring secret societies plot to possess this powerful information. The secret has been protected and kept by such luminaries throughout history as Isaac Newton, Dan Quayle, and, yes, Leonardo Da Vinci (I'm being facetious about one of those). Promising start, but from there is all goes downhill. The main charactors are intensely familiar from airport novels galore - the intelligent and unconventionally beautiful heroine (whose strong, clear eyes keep flashing), and the intelligent and unconventionally handsome hero (who keeps giving lopsided grins). These cookie-cutter charactors lack real depth, and instead are given quirks with pat explanations that well-written charactors don't need.
The plot jerks around, with one cliff-hanging chapter after another, with so little pay-off that it comes off as just manipulative rather than honestly suspenseful. And here's the big disappointment: the revelations - about Church, Da Vinci, and the Holy Grail - are all completely passe. We knew that already! Or at least you should know all this information already if you had spent at least a little time reading about Church, art, or feminist history. Or even if you watch the Discovery Channel on a semi-regular basis! So my advise is: Go buy a book on Church history, art history, or Barbara G. Walker's Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets if you're interested in this kind of thing. Unless you can't read about history without a mad albino monk villian and a heroine who walks with long, fluid strides to liven things up - in which case, fair enough, this book is for you.
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