Rating: 
Summary: Awesome. Simply Awesome!
Review: Dan Brown can keep you clutching your book, well into the night, despite your better intentions to put it down. If you have to move, you will take the book with you. To the bathroom, to the breakfast table, even to your important meeting the next day.
Quite possibly one of the best of his generation's storytellers, Dan Brown weaves a fascinating tale of betrayal, papal intrigue, and scientific terror. All of his books are extremely well researched, combining the facts most of us desire with the what-if that most of us fear. A compelling storyteller with his head in the clouds and his feet on the ground, he is one of his generation's best.This was the first book by Dan Brown that I read, and it reinforced my belief that you can teach and entertain at the same time with fiction. Set against the backdrop of the Vatican and a Papal election, this book is the fascinating introduction of Robert Langdon, Brown's bookworm hero. A Harvard symbologist, Langdon gets called in to help solve a mystery. Unfortunately, he gets caught up in it and it has some very good and very bad lasting results for him. He returns in Brown's latest book, The Da Vinci Code, which is incredible as well. I recommend all of Brown's books, because they are simply great. Get this book.
Harkius
Rating:
Summary: Spellbinding!
Review: All right, a few suggestions. DO NOT START THIS BOOK IF YOU HAVE TO GET UP THE NEXT MORNING. Forget it, you WILL NOT be able to put it down. I suggest a long weekend, an early morning start and unplugging the telephone. Brown has successfully created a character driven suspense tale (an unusual acheivment in and of itself). The people here are as arresting as the ephemeral strands of history that tie the tale together with continually tantalizing possiblities - Add edge-of-your-seat suspense and I defy anyone to put it down before each puzzle is unravelled, every villain identifed and our heroes crowned. The best part is you THINK you know how each of those things will be managed. Forget it, you don't have a clue.
Rating: 
Summary: Not Even Good Enough For Vacation Reading
Review: Based on all the great reviews, and the comparisons to "The Eight" by Katherine Neville, I brought this book along on my last vacation. While it is a page-turner, the writing is poor, and the plot borders on the ridiculous. I completely second the other review that mentions the preposterous ending. I was highly disappointed in this book, even for beach reading.
Rating: 
Summary: Well Done, Robert Langdon Rocks!
Review: Angels & Demons is a fast-paced thriller with marvelous depth of character. Dan Brown introduces the reader to Robert Langdon, Harvard symbologist, who is destined to become the next Indiana Jones. Let the kids line up for J. K. Rowling's next installment, Dan Brown is brain candy for grown ups!
Rating: 
Summary: Fun but ignorant of Catholicism
Review: This is a page-turner, with an interesting plot and what appears to be expert information about architecture and renaissance art. The Masonic symbology of the dollar bill is fascinating. However, the author's sloppiness with orthodox Catholicism is a disappointment. I won't spoil the ending with specifics, but his Catholic characters who should think in an orthodox Catholic way, do not. I would have no problem with characters who wanted to "reform" the Church having unorthodox ideas if they were presented as such. Those in the highest positions in the Church with beliefs at odds with Catholic teaching should know where they, themselves, differ with orthodoxy. This betrays a lack of familiarity with doctrine and those in the Curia. I read techno-thrillers in part to get an insider's view of organizations I want to know more about. Now I have doubts about much of the technical info in the book.
Rating:
Summary: A perfect blend of religion and science
Review: I started reading this book when the power went off during an ice storm; I lit all the candles in my apartment and read 250 pages in a single night. When my power was restored the next day, I cut the lights off again and finished the book by candlelight. Once you start reading this book, you will not be able to put it down. Nearly every review I read about this book applauded the author for his plot twists, the book's basis in factual information, and its quick pace. While I enjoyed every single one of these strengths, I especially appreciated Dan Brown's excellent presentation of the conflict between science and religion. As a scientist trying to resolve these two aspects of his life, Angels and Demons provided some excellent food for thought in a very entertaining package.
Rating:
Summary: Just Kidding?
Review: Not only is this one of the best thriller novels I've read, but at the end Brown leaves you wondering how much of the foundation of the novel (in his mind) is fiction or non-fiction. Without spoiling the ending, I'm still wondering months later what Brown thinks he knows or if he's just having fun with deep doodoo (the European, power-elite form of voodoo). Apparently, like Umberto Eco, that's what he wanted, and at least with me, he succeeded.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Novel
Review: I ran across this book and was intrigued by the title and cover (hardcover edition). I can tell you that this novel really moves with an excellent plot. I would place it in the same category as Focault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco with regard to secret societies operating in the present, intellectual observations, art history, the Vatican, murder, etc. I am awed by the author's ability to combine all of the above elements in addition to scientific breakthroughs, an attractive hero and an pace that will not allow you to put this book down. The plot is multilayered and it will force you to dwell on the numerous stories being told simulataneously. I found myself thinking of many ideas and situations he presents and their I am looking forward to future novels from Dan Brown that explore the past intruding upon the present in very unexpected ways.
Rating:
Summary: I never met an Illuminati I didn't like
Review: Dan Brown has created the ultimate thrill ride with Angels & Demons. After buying this book and only spending a few moments with it, I told a friend that I had just read the most exciting 27 pages I could remember, and that if the rest of the book was half as good as the beginning, I hadn't wasted my money.
Once I had finished the book, I went looking for other Dan Brown titles, knowing that I was unlikely to be disappointed with anything else he'd written.
Angels & Demons forces the reader to ask some very interesting questions. Did the Illuminati exist? If they did, what was their effect on Western Civilization? Do they still exist, and are they a danger? One hopes, of course, that they have always been mythical, but there are those lingering doubts.
Filled with interesting, complex charactes and wonderfuly exotic locales - even if they are in places we think we know - Angels & Demons delivers the goods. A fun and exciting read all the way through.
Rating:
Summary: Religion Meets Science
Review: Good and evil, in the guises of the Catholic Church and science, face off against each other in this full-on action thriller. At times it's difficult to figure out who is working for the dark side and who is on the side of light. And this confusion is all thanks to the clever plot twists and cliff-hanger chapter endings. To give names to the opposing sides, we have the Vatican on one side and the Illuminati on the other. The scene is set with the murder of a brilliant scientist who was branded on his chest with a unique marking. This is followed closely by the news that a bomb (the invention of the murdered scientist) sits somewhere in Vatican City and is set to detonate at midnight, some 12 hours hence. To top off the predicament, the Pope has recently died and the Cardinals are about to enter conclave, but 4 of their number have been kidnapped with the threat that they will be killed, 1 every hour at various spots around Rome. As far as tension-packed scenarios go, this one's a doozy. Caught in the crossfire and somehow charge with the task of averting disaster is Robert Langdon, a religious symbologist who is led on a treasure hunt type chase around Rome. It really is thrill-a-minute stuff mixing historical fact with present-day improbability creating a tremendously exciting story.
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