Rating: 
Summary: Fun Read
Review: A fun, fast read. Brown's book is exciting and great. Great for some free-time reading.
Rating: 
Summary: Ho Hum
Review: As a simple mystery it is nice for a sunday read but I was able to figure out ALL the clues WAY before the characters - and I'm NOT in Mensa. As a couple of supposedly intelligent people with their lives at risk the main characters made a boatload (think Titanic)of blunders.
Much of the 'factual' information is blended with a large portion of theoretical and not well grounded research. The Gospel of Magdalen has been around for quite a while - not news to me. If this book is about feminine power why are there No strong independent female characters? The female lead couldn't get herself out of a paper bag without a clue from 'ole grampa. The Goddess org. is led, dictated by, and set up by males - like little boys with secret codes, keys, passwords to the treehouse type stuff - what truly defining and powerful parts do females actually have here? There is no balance of power between Female/Male here. It plays on the fears of feminine/goddess thinkers and anti Catholic sentiment. For book sales it thus belittles what is an important and I believe historic movement in human thought.
Rating:
Summary: Just Read It, DON'T Base Your Life On It!
Review: An excellent read, but it's truly SAD to think that some readers assume that Dan Brown's contrived history is factual and would even base their spiritual beliefs on a book of fiction. Just read some of the other reviews to see what I'm talking about. It reminds of the guy who watched too many episodes of Highlander and decided he was an immortal! (I'm not making this up.)One reader compared Da Vinci Code to James BeauSeigneur's Christ Clone Trilogy and suggested that like BeauSeigneur, Brown should footnote all the factual material. While BeauSeigneur and Brown have a similar style and both deal with controversial religious topics, BeauSeigneur can footnote the facts in his fiction BECAUSE THEY ARE FACTS. Brown's "facts" cannot be footnoted because they are a fictitious as the rest of the book.
Rating: 
Summary: Great book, fast read
Review: This book is interesting, fast-paced and well-written. Once I started it, I couldn't put it down. Even if you don't believe the theories it contains, you have to marvel at the possibilities... The only slight disappointment was near the ending (it seemed a bit fairy-talish...). Despite that, it's a definite must-read.
Rating:
Summary: An Amazing Page Turner
Review: I admit, I was clueless about the hype surrounding this book. I just knew that it was on the bestseller list. So, I saw it on the library shelf, and thought I'd give it a whirl. My favorite books are thrillers and mysteries, but sadly, the stuff that's being churned out these days is pretty much garbage. I didn't start this one with much hope, either. Boy was I surprised! I am a former Christian minister (now a "New Ager") who's just now starting to explore the Divine Feminine. (You know how taboo *that* is, right? And believe me, it ain't just Catholicism...) I knew that El Shaddai meant many-breasted one, but that was about it. The information in this book blew me away. It all made perfect sense to me. (Although I can certainly see how it would enrage Christians!) It's very rare that you find a book that is both an engaging work of fiction *and* a deliverer of historical and mystical ideas. It has whet my appetite to explore the Divine Feminine and this aspect to spirituality that I've been missing out on due to my upbringing. For some reason, I felt the first 3/4 was the best part of the book, but it was very satisfying on all levels--even the ending. However, Brown gets into too much detail with architecture, the looooong cat and mouse part at Westminister Abbey, etc. A good deal could have been trimmed from this book. The characters are memorable and unique: an Albino monk, an Englishmen in Paris who walks on metal crutches, a hot-head French capitan,... I felt as if I could see each and every one. Setting wise, all the French streets and architectual references were lost on me, but the details didn't take away from the pace of the novel, nor the intrigue. Technically, Brown did everything he was supposed to: ended the chapters with hooks, shifted perspectives fluidly, "showed not told", etc. It's formulaic...but formula *works*. You'll enjoy this book if you love good fiction and if you have an open mind.
Rating:
Summary: Wait for the movie!
Review: I read this book thinking I might learn something useful about Leonardo Da Vinci. I was disappointed. The material concerning the master seems to be mostly nonsense, as is the rest of the book -- entertaining nonsense like an Indiana Jones film, but nonsense nonetheless. The more I read the more I thought that the main purpose of the book was to be turned into a Hollywood film with Harrison Ford playing the lead, that is, Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor and expert on "the divine feminine" in mythology. Langdon finds himself invited to the Louvre to talk with a curator. He finds the curator dead and Langdon immediately becomes a prime suspect in the grisly killing. The curator's granddaughter, Sophie Neveu, is a cryptologist with the Paris police and she discovers that her grandfather has left her a complicated message which she and Langdon spend the rest of the book attempting to decipher. For a bona fide expert in cryptolgy, she often seems obtuse. On the other hand Langdon has more than a little bit of Indianna Jones in him, a surprise for us given that he is a Harvard professor, hence the suggestion that Harrison Ford is just right for this role. The heart of this novel is a new search for the Holy Grail -- the fate of the Western World is supposed to hang in the balance. Few readers will believe much of this preposterous tale, I hope. It appears, at least to Dan Brown, the author, that Jesus was married and had a family. His progeny are still alive today, as the reader will discover. The Holy Grail is not what we have thought it to be and I'll let anyone who decides to read this book discover the secret of the Grail. My advice is: wait for the movie that is sure to follow. All the fans of Harrison Ford and Indiana Jones are sure to love this film if Stephen Spielberg can be convinced to direct the movie. Two hours is about the right amount of time to be distracted by this story, not the two or three evenings it will take to read the book, a fast read to be sure. Many reviewers hated this book because they felt it was blasphemous. The Da Vinci Code is not serious enough to be blasphemy. It is mostly fluff which few thoughtful people will take seriously. Other reviewers note the bad writing and many factual errors Brown has made as he rewrites history. Again, The Da Vinci Code is a popular novel; just as in an Indiana Jones film, we are not expecting more than a roller coaster ride with a safe and satisfying ending on the platform where we let out a long breath and think to ourselves, "I'm glad that's over."
Rating:
Summary: Factual, Fast, and Fun
Review: I was introduced to the books of author Dan Brown only three weeks ago, but have quickly absorbed all four of his published works. It is easy to see why some are comparing the work of Dan Brown and James BeauSeigneur (THE CHRIST CLONE TRILOGY). Both Brown and BeauSeigneur deal masterfully with the more mysterious features of religion, politics, and science. Both bring to light amazing bits of information, which they weave into the intricate patterns of their stories. Both are highly imaginative and write with a ring of authenticity that makes for a compelling read. While Brown compresses labyrinthine plots into brief time periods to provide page-turning suspense, BeauSeigneur trilogy is of epic proportion, covering several decades. While Brown applies the mysteries of history to the drama of "today," BeauSeigneur uses both history and prophecy (from perhaps a dozen major world religions) to transport the reader from the world of today, to the very dawning of a new age in a story reminiscent of the scope of Asimov's classic, FOUNDATION. One other difference is that BeauSeigneur has taken the novel (pun intended and forgiveness is asked) approach of including footnotes in his books of fiction. By doing so, he all but eliminates the necessity of suspending disbelief. Few authors employ such strong factual grounding as to make footnotes useful, but I believe Brown's work (and his readers) would benefit from BeauSeigneur's innovation.
Rating:
Summary: Good but Over-Hyped
Review: This was an excellent book, but it wasn't God's greatest gift to literature, as some of these people seem to think. If you have a long train ride to work every morning you could do much worse.
Rating:
Summary: Action packed, fascinating and impossible to put down. Wow!
Review: I'm usually not into plot-driven novels. So The Da Vinci Code was a real change of pace for me. All I can say is "WOW". From the very first page I was absolutely captivated and found it impossible to put the book down. Dan Brown is the master of suspense. He knows just how to end each chapter with a cliffhanger. Most of the book takes place during a 24-hour period and the story reads like one exciting roller coaster ride. The subject is one that I know nothing about -- religious societies, secrets of Da Vinci's paintings and the search for the Holy Grail. The author fed the reader the historical details at just the right moments to enrich the mystery, and as one preposterous thing after another happened to the main characters, I was always able to follow some of the complex puzzles that were constantly being uncovered. The book starts with a murder. And a secret to uncover. There's a male historian who unwittingly gets involved. And a highly intelligent female code breaker who just happens to be involved in the secret. What follows next is a breathtaking race to prevent further violence. And, at the same time, discover the a secret that has implications for the entire world. Along the way, these two characters have to solve one puzzle after another. I was totally caught up in the unraveling of this web, which was described so clearly that I never had to stop reading. I loved this book. It is so well paced and so interesting that it didn't even matter that almost no time was spent on character development. Here, the plot was everything and a mini-escape from the world around us. Just be prepared to schedule some time for reading. Because once you start The Da Vinci Code, you won't want to stop. Highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: Very entertaining, but the seams are showing
Review: Well worth it now if you can borrow it; otherwise wait for paper. Readable because the ideas are interesting and well presented, but the characters are sketchy and the author's style lacks polish.
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