Rating: 
Summary: ENTERTAINING, BUT.............
Review: ...was disappointed at the ending. I know the book has had a lot of negative reviews, from angry "Art Historians". However, wheter it was or wasn't accurate to their artistic liking, I must give credit to Mr. Brown for his fantastic imagination and the journey he took us on. As for the Opus Dei, they do exist.
Rating: 
Summary: Lame
Review: A little warmed over pseudohistory from the Discovery Channel, cardboard characters, and writing so amateurish it is painful to read: this is The Da Vinci Code. I hated this book. I only finished it because it was a Christmas present.About halfway through I began to skim. I finished the last 100 pages in a half hour. That's about as much time as I think it's worth. Oh well, it was on sale and I can probably sell it to somebody else. I picked up another of Dan Brown's book, read the first page, and it was as badly written as this one was. That's all for me! I can bear no more.
Rating:
Summary: Truly baffling
Review: I'm referring, of course, not to the plot but to this book's huge success. It has made very little impact here in the UK but is now being marketed very aggressively so no doubt will be a best-seller here, too. I found it poorly written and pretty boring, full of implausabilities. The story keeps stopping while the author shoehorns in huge chunks of information and clunky descriptions of Paris. So why are you all buying this book?
Rating: 
Summary: Killer-thriller
Review: Artfully written thriller, intelligent and lucid fiction based on... History?! It is the best possible comment to the book "History:Fiction or Science?" that proves consensual History itself to be a complete FICTION!! I enjoyed the reading, but the ideas behind the "Da Vinci-Code" are erroneous and misleading. Why should we allow to be made a fool of?
Rating: 
Summary: Da Vinci, the travelogue
Review: Not only is this book a great page-turner, it makes a great list of places to visit while in Europe
Rating: 
Summary: Choose your own adventure
Review: The Da Vinci Code is an enjoyable read, complex and creative, for a page-turner. The characters do not lead normal lives (eat, sleep, experience emotional conflict etc.) The author has a police cryptographer and a symbolist pursuing a murder, chasing grail clues and being chased, by an albino, by the police and, in turn, by the murderer. They take planes, trains, armoured trucks and various automobiles, which are magically at their disposal whenever they hit a dead end. At any rate, the book is flawed and full of misinformation about Leonardo Da Vinci, Mary Magdalene, the Catholic Church and related splinter groups. I don't know how anyone could be seriously offended by such a superficial treatment of art interpretation and religious history. That aside, it was fun to try to solve the codes and clues left along the way and see which path the author chose to take for the next episode.
Rating:
Summary: good book
Review: I found this book to be an excellent read and a very suspenseful thriller. Dan Brown is an amazing author and I know that I will be reading his books until the very last one. The book starts out with a Harvard symbologist named Robert Langdon is staying in Paris for a while. He was suppose to have a drink with a man by the name of Jacques Sauniere who is the curator of the Louvre, the museum that is home to the classic and beautiful Mona Lisa. But later that evening, Langdon received a very rude awakening from the French police force saying that Sauniere had been murdered. Since Langdon was suppose to be the last to have seen Sauniere, he was a prime suspect to the murder. Sauniere had left a message on the floor with a pen that only shows up in a black light and Langdon's name was in it. This made him very nervous. This is when a young and beautiful young lady named Sophie Neveu entered the story. She worked for the Police as a cryptologist and was the granddaughter to the late Sauniere. Sophie new that Langdon was innocent and would stop at nothing to prove it to the police. That included breaking the law and turning them both in to fleeing fugitives. Also in the words left on the floor by the curator was a code that lead the two new fugitives to a key that opened a safety deposit box in a very private bank. This lead the two explorers into a great journey for what they would soon find to be the Holy Grail itself, or rather, her self. This book points out things about religion and the Holy Grail that are very fascinating and intrigued me to the point of continuing research on the subject. The Da Vinci Code is a book that grabs your attention from the very beginning and doesn't let go at any given moment. It was very well written and very well researched. I would recommend this book to anyone who loves thrillers and mysteries.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome Story yet Poor Explanation
Review: First off, as a story this book was wonderful. It is one of those books that you really do not want to have to put down. As far as a fictitious story is concerned it is a good read. I did not like the fact that there was not good explanation and no support of all the claims in the book. The author brings up ideas but never completes them. I thought the book was susposed to be focused on a view of Jesus, but I was left with some strange sexual worship of Mary. I walked away from the book wondering if the author was trying to proof anything or just write a good story. He did the later of the two. I would not recommend this book to younger readers. There is language and explicit sexuality. If you read this book, you might want to look into reading Breaking the Da Vinci Code which gives another viewpoint on the issues.
Rating:
Summary: Big build up, bigger let down
Review: First, the good points. Brown either did meticulous research or he has a vivid imagination; the fact that I can't decide which or how much of each he used is a virtue of the book, not a flaw. Architecture, art and religion get a better, more thorough (if fictional) treatment than they receive in most popular novels. Either way, the details that form the background and motivation for the story worked very well for me. The story moves quite quickly. For most of the book - save one or two transparent plot twists - the Brown's story kept me turning the pages. This is a excellent basic premise and creative creation. Now the bad news. The hype behind this book has been excessive. This is "Indiana Jones in Paris", with a melodramatic, frustratingly weak ending, and none of Jones' panache. The characters, especially the male and female leads, are humorless, colorless (readers of the book will detect the bad pun in this comment) and unable to earn my sympathy, interest or affection. Nelson DeMille does a much better job in this genre, with colorful, funny male leads and dashing, daring damsels. Jack Higgins used to write like this before he started to become repetitive. Some of the plot turns seem to be signaled well in advance. Without revealing them, suffice it to say, anyone with a smattering of knowledge about Da Vinci will easily see through one of the clues that sees to baffle our experts. For those who find the book to be demeaning to or libelous of Catholics, Opus Dei or other real or fictional religious sects, all I can say is "this is fiction," and leave it at that. Enjoy what you can of the artistic elements but be prepared for disappointment in the end.
Rating:
Summary: Okay thriller with fictionalized historical background
Review: This book is an adequate thriller complete with a hero and heroine in peril, racing against the clock, a series of secret plots/societies in the background. What Dan Brown has done differently here is to use religious history and religious organizations as the background for his yarn (as opposed to some secret government or mafia group). This makes his work different and somewhat refreshing. There are some minor shortcomings in the plot and a bit in the pacing (he overdoes historical tie-ins at times). Overall, it was a fun read. If you read thrillers, it is probably worth your time as you will certainly here it discussed.
That brings me to a second point. It is a work of fiction and even though well researched, the research is used to create a fictional background for this tale. If this makes the average reader curious to look into the background all well and good. However, Mr Brown's fiction and fictionization of historical details should not be taken as facts.
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