Rating: 
Summary: engaging fiction
Review: This book is fun and fast-paced and very intriguing, but don't take it too seriously. While the author has clearly done his research and reveals many truths that some readers may not be familiar with, there are parts of the plot which are based more on hokey conspiracy theories than on real history. Keep in mind that you're reading a work of fiction, albeit one with a great deal of solid fact supporting the story, and you'll enjoy it. If you're interested in the topics that Dan Brown brings up, such as the real story of Mary Magdelene, the near eradication of the sacred feminine in Western culture, and the truth about Opus Dei, then do your own research and reach your own conclusions. In the meantime, read this book and enjoy it for what it's meant to be and remember, "the things you is liable to read in the Bible, they ain't necessarily so."
Rating:
Summary: Food For Inquisitive Minds
Review: The aspect of the novel that I found to be the most interesting was that it brought up a very unique interpretation of religous history. Immediatly after reading the book, I wanted to research some of the more esoteric points of the novel myself. The story is fairly clever. So clever, in fact, that I was somewhat dissapointed by the ending because Dan Brown's writing made me expect something more interesting. Overall, I would suggest that someone read this novel if he has an interest in history or will enjoy a read that might be somewhat educational. However, I did not find myself greatly entertained at any point of the novel. My interest peaked at several points in the story, but I quickly lost interest at other points. My general impression is that book merits 4 to 4.5 stars.
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....
Rating: 
Summary: AMAZING READ
Review: What we know about certain things like the Holy Grail may not be what it is. Although some may think that the novel of Dan Brown could affect the Catholic belief, it is not that bad to be open to things that could really be mind liberating for us. The genesis of the novel is as meaty and exciting as the end. A great salute for a great book.
Rating:
Summary: Fast Paced and Highly Intelligent
Review: I loved this book! It is refreshing to find a best-selling author who can actually write well. The plot is intriguing and the characters believeable. Even though I was quite familiar with the theories presented, the author managed to make it all seem fresh, new, and exciting. I could not put this book down. It even inspired me to buy everthing else than Dan Brown has written and I have been favorably impressed with all of his other books. It seems that I have a new favorite author!
Rating:
Summary: A Riddle Wrapped into an Enigma
Review: J
Five stars to the author who develops such a magnificent imagination. He says that all references to the past are true. But, as they say in Italy: If it's not true, it surely is well invented. Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu try to do what countless savants over the centuries tried in vain: Find the Holy Grail. The Vatican gets involved and, of course, Opus Dei. Jacques Sauniere, curator of the Louvre, is murdered early on. Apparently he was the grand marshal of the Priory of Sion, and they know where the Grail is. Robert and Sophie progress from anagram to double entendre riddles, on and on for over 400 pages. The red herring going through it all is Mary Magdalene and the cult of the Sacred Feminine. But, after a while, you do get tired of fabulous and saintly Mary M. and all the feminism. And the ending of this very large book is rather silly.
Rating:
Summary: Good Mystery, Bad History
Review: The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown is a gripping mystery novel. The story moves on four fronts: the hero and heroine, the head of a Roman Catholic organization, the chief inspector of the French police and a fanatical murderer. Like checkers on a checkerboard the chapters move these pieces of the story in turn until they all reach home row at the end. The author is able to maintain suspense throughout the story so that it has momentum to the very last page, not letting the mystery completely dissolve until the end. It is not the nature of this book to probe deeply into the human character, the nature of reality or to generate beautiful prose. It reads like a movie script, al la Raiders of the Lost Ark. The author uses two characters as experts on everything, especially Christianity and some of its historical struggles. Because the book is fiction it is able to build its own picture of Christianity and the church without regard to historical accuracy. It does convey a patronizing attitude toward the church and its faith, an attitude common place now and throughout the history of the church. Theirs is an old scenario: Jesus was a great man whose movement got hijacked by powerful people in Roman society and transformed into a secular power. Their version adds the proposition that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and the two produced children. This story line sets up a classic mystery novel struggle between an evil titan and a heroic minority replete with centuries of intrigue and violence, i.e. Luke Skywalker and the Federation. This is all great fun in a novel, but should not be confused with the truth. Proposing that Jesus was married and had children is just another way of saying he wasn't the one proclaimed by the Christian faith, that he was a man in the flow of history not an intersect between God and history. Tying this idea in with the worship of a female goddess adds mystery and tension to the story and taps into the energy of the modern struggle between the sexes and society's effort to harness the sex drive. Genuine historians that are anti-Christian don't claim that Rome hijacked the Christian movement, but rather that the Christian movement hijacked Rome. So even though the church was changed by its being adopted as the state religion, and even though its secular power led to terrible corruption, it's first three hundred years laid down the fundamental message. Constantine did not. What he did do was demand that the church settle its message so he could have a coherent religion to authorize. The story line of this book elevates the divine female as if this were a breath of fresh air in an oppressive male-dominant Christian society. The divine female is nothing more than the ancient worship of sex. It is as commonplace as Hustler magazine. The worship of Venus three thousand years ago is the same impulse that drives the advertising and entertainment industry today. Just as commerce is dependent on sex today, production was linked to procreation then. If you could get the male and female gods to mate (so they reasoned), you could produce human, animal and vegetable crops on the earthly plane, i.e. wealth. Christianity was born into a male-dominated culture. It didn't create it. The church has deviated from its earliest affirmation of the equality of male and female ("in Christ there is neither male nor female" -- the apostle Paul, 60 AD.) God's voice in the Bible never admits to being male or female. When Moses asks for God's identity, he gets "I am who I am." The book's experts are fiction and so is their expertise. Solomon's temple, for instance, was destroyed long before Mary Magdalene came along. We know little about it and certainly don't know what its columns looked like. It was the second temple, the one build by Herod the Great that she would have seen. The holy of holies was not under ground but rather stood at the center of temple mount. She couldn't have gotten in it much less under it, dead or alive. The Crusades were a silly business that brought back nothing of historical value except the knowledge of a Muslim culture more advanced than the European culture. The Crusaders were completely ignorant of the land they conquered. The local people neither new nor cared where the bones of Mary Magdalene might be. They did know they could sell the Crusaders anything with the right story. So the knights credulously or greedily brought back relics purported to be fragments of the cross, the hair of John the Baptist and so on. The grail may have had a forged artifact initially or may have just been a story brought back without the souvenir. My expertise doesn't extend to all the areas the "experts" in the book claim, but if their errors in fact are consistent with the ones I can pick out without research, I presume that it is all fiction and should be taken as such. It is a fun book that is irrelevant to the serious subjects of Christian faith, sexuality and hope for a better world. Roland McGregor
7/2003
Rating:
Summary: Pure Fiction
Review: Those who like to solve puzzles will like aspects of this book; however, the puzzles do wear on the reader after a while. Disappointingly, the trail of cryptograms, puzzles, and the like ultimately leads back to the origin. The search for the Holy Grail is never definitively concluded, but hints abound as to what constitutes this religious symbol. It is this suggestion that is most troubling. The "Code" is a fictional tale built upon what is purported to be a factual underpinning. It is that foundation which cries out be challenged. The central theme of the book is that Mary Magdalene was Jesus' wife and that the Catholic Church, through the agency of Constantine and the early popes, conspired to suppress this information to suit their own purposes. The truth, we are told, is to be revealed in the Holy Grail, a series of documents that will uncover the reality of the situation. This "truth" has been kept by a secret society called the Priory of Sion, one of whose members was Leonardo Da Vinci. Leonardo, painting in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century, was aware of secrets dating from the first century, that virtually no one outside of the Priory knew. The manifestation of this knowledge is included in Leonardo's painting of the Last Supper where, we are told, the apostle on Jesus' immediate right is Mary Magdalene. No matter that the New Testament names the twelve, with Mary's name being conspicuously absent. The names of the apostles listed in the canon were presumably altered by the early Church. Not only that, but it is suggested that the chalice which contained the blood of Christ is not, as so many believe, the Holy Grail since Leonardo paints cups before all of the apostles (i.e., there was not just one cup at the last supper). Again Leonardo becomes the ultimate arbiter; however, those readers who are perceptive might realize that it is possible that, as Leonardo suggests, each apostle had his own cup, but only in Jesus' cup was wine transformed. The latter cup could then have been passed to the apostles. Then again, the logic in this book is used up in solving puzzles. Where is the evidence for all of this? From whence does it come? This so-called evidence has been part of a feminist attack on the underpinning of the Catholic Church for some time. It is an assault that the Jesus Seminar would love and is based on the questionable gospels of Mary (i.e., Mary Magdalene) and of Philip. These texts were almost certainly written well over a century after the synoptic Gospels and are part of the Nag Hammadi texts discovered in Egypt. There are no know Christian origins to these texts. It seems likely that they represent a mixture of Christian belief and local religious ideology. For example, these texts, in accord with their Gnostic origins, may have been written partly to justify the use of ... orgies in certain of the Gnostic rituals, a circumstance which is lauded in "Code." The sword of conspiracy, you see, can cut both ways. Much of this is treated in a scolarly fashion in "Hidden Gospels, How the Search For Jesus Lost Its Way" by Philip Jenkins. The latter states, "Feminist interpretations of the hidden gospels represent a triumph of hope over judgment." For me, the real problem with this novel is its willingness to attack the beliefs of a major religion with precious little credible supporting evidence. In our society, have we reached the point where there is nothing sacred? We attack the most respected of our heros and institutions (Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?). The author, Dan Brown has been quoted as saying, "I think there will be people for whom the book will be---well, 'offensive' may be be too strong a word." No, Mr. Brown, it is not too strong a word.
Rating:
Summary: Pefect for the Beach Bag
Review: Admittedly I have "read" the audio version and found it to have clearly devliered on the best reviews already written. A+
Rating:
Summary: An Intelligible Murder Mystery
Review: For what it is, this book is great. While I don't really read mystery/suspense books because I find many of them mindless, Dan Brown has incorporated all the elements of a good suspense novel with numerous interesting facts about art and history. It may not be for anyone, but if you've ever wandered the halls of the Louvre or even the Met, you're bound to find it enthralling!
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