Rating: Summary: This book tops them all! Review: I chose this book in part as an introduction to Dan Brown and because of the sale I got on it at the time. I read it all in one day and bought the rest of Dan Brown's collection the next. I've read Grisham and Clancy and Higgins and others, but this book topped them all! Non-stop suspense, intriguing details, and a plot that is weaved like the very finest of tapestries. This is my first online review ever. I have never felt this strongly about a book before. That's how good it is!
Rating: Summary: Great read! Review: I often hear people speak of books they "just couldn't put down" but I rarely come across those myself. Well, this book was definitely one of those page turners. I was just on holiday visiting friends in London when I picked up this book. I found myself waking up earlier and taking longer tube rides just so I could get through a few more pages. This book offers everything: murder mystery, history, science, culture, religion and a bit of romance. Loved it!
Rating: Summary: A Thriller, but not good theology Review: There is no doubt that Angels and Demons is a fast-paced thriller. It's worth the read. I'll let others comment on the science versus science fiction behind antimatter in book. However, one had better not take the "history" or "theology" as accurate (In deed one need not be "accurate" even in an "historical NOVEL".) Many of the details of vestiture, language, and theology (e.g. Church's attitude toward "Creationism" along with the "Christian Right") echo the comment made by one reviewer that the Italian translations were not very accurate. But, again as a thriller, it's great!
Rating: Summary: Exciting Review: This is a really good book. Fast and interesting. Too bad that 95% of the quotations in Italian are wrong. I realize it's not important to most readers, but it does make you wonder how careful the research was.
Rating: Summary: lives up to expectations Review: one of the best books i've read in a long time. grabs you pulls you in and won't let go. one of the best mysteries to come along in a long time. just as soon as you think you know what's going to happen you are wrong. once you start this book you won't be able to put it down. with likeable characters and evil villans this is what a great novel should be
Rating: Summary: Ivy league rationalist bummer Review: Why is it Dan Brown's "religious" novels--technically inventive and well researched in the extreme--leave a mild distaste for some? Could it be that his not so hidden message is, "I believe in disbelief," as befits a preppie well ensconced in the Eastern liberal establishment? Remember that the best predictor of how you voted in the last Presidential election was how often you go to church, with propensity to vote Democratic inversely related to frequency of church attendance. The author's purpose seems to be to make people who go to Christian churches feel stupid, while paying the usual liberal obeisance to New Age and Eastern spirituality. This is unfortunate, as such false dichotmotization feeds the current perverse polarization of American politics that is excluding the middle most Americans would probably prefer to inhabit.
Rating: Summary: Expected more Review: The book was 200 pages longer than the story required. The beginning is extremely slow and I almost gave up on the book. There were some nice unexpected plot twists but they were too little too late.
Rating: Summary: Too Intense to Put Down Review: After reading the DaVinci Code, it was a quick decision to look for Angels and Demons. Dan Brown's research and imagination make for truly suspenseful can't-put-them down books. The Illuminati, a secret society dating back to the time of Galileo is believed to have died out until Leonardo Vetra is found murdered and branded with the sign of the Illuminati on his chest. The Director of the Cern Institute that employed Vetra and his daughter Vittoria, summons Robert Langdon to try to explain how Vetra could have been murdered and how his discovery of anti-matter could have been stollen. The story moves to Rome where the pope has died and a conclave to elect a new pope is about to begin. It appears that terrorists have planted the anti-matter beneath the Vatican and will destroy the city when the timer on the apparatus runs out. There seems to be no solution as Robert Langdon and Vittoria Vetra together race through Rome looking for clues to the whereabouts of the canister. The ending is a surprise and the suspense is tight to the last page.
Rating: Summary: A good fight-against-time book Review: As a thriller, is thrilling enough:fast paced, enthralling and whit a good plot twist and surprise in the end. Only, I wish our Author hasn't made his protagonist so naive. Maybe an anthropologist wouldn't know of the most cryptic aspect of particle physics, but his astonishment on hearing of antimatter seems absurd in a learned man. And has he never heard of CERN and particle accelerators? As if this stereotype of the humanist scholar totally oblivious of science matters was not annoying enough, there's an extravagant overemphatization of the rift between Science and Religion.Here seems to be an unbridgeable chasm, a situation that is rather different fron reality ( see the latest pronouncement of the Pope in the matter). This said, it's a good thriller, whit carboard characters (how many post-feminism women-of-action way smartest that the male protagonist have you seen?) who don't do much in terms of human interaction,but,hey, they've got to save the world!
Rating: Summary: Outstanding Book! Review: This is one of the best books I've read this year. The research that went into the writing of this book must have been incredible. The plot kept you moving through the book and the historical information backing it all up was so interesting that I came away from reading it feeling smarter. I love when reading a book makes me feel like I've learned something that I knew nothing about before. Kudos to Dan Brown! I can't wait to read The Da'Vinci Code!
|