Rating: 
Summary: The Devil is in the Details
Review: Dan Brown is a bit like a trainee-pilot. Takeoffs, competent enough; level flight, just OK; but landings - a disaster. There toward the end I thought I was reading a rough draft of an Eddie Izzard sketch, with each event becoming more fantastical (and unbelievable) than the next.There's willing suspension of disbelief and then there's Angels & Demons. Yikes! The plot is preposterous on its face and it's downhill from there. There's this ancient secret brotherhood, you see. And a devastating new weapon of destruction aimed at an unthinkable target. Time's a wastin', so it's Robert Langdon (of all people) to the rescue! Langdon is a curious chap, obviously not a liberal arts major. With all his degrees Langdon can out-Sherlock Sherlock one second and then turn up as a mud dumb bumpkin the next. Brown should have spoken with a few good Jesuits before he launched this epistle. Taking down the Vatican/Vatican City (minus some 161 Cardinals!) will not destroy Christianity in general and the Roman Catholic Church in particular. Where in the devil did Brown get that idea? And the prose! "Their eyes met, and then she dropped away like a sinking stone." Ouch. (Wait 'til he rereads that one years from now.) How about, "The silence that followed might as well have been thunder." Huh? Just one more. "The cardinals' accusing miens evaporated into aghast stares, as if every soul in the room were praying the camerlengo was wrong." Hmmm . . . Haven't seen this type of hyperventilating obfuscation since Cold Mountain. In the future, Langdon would be well advised to subscribe to caller ID and screen the heck out of his early a.m. phone calls. The world will be a better place.
Rating: 
Summary: What a Thriller
Review: Wow. I ordered this book last week, got it yesterday, finished my college homework at 2:30 last night, wasn't really tired yet, and decided to read "just a little" before i went to bed. About 5 hours later when the sun came up i was still reading, and i knew that there was no way i'd stop until i finished the book. Luckily for me i polished it off by 10:30. This thriller grabbed me so quickly that i honestly did not put it down a single time after opening it. Once again, i am amazed by the factual information that Brown writes around, it is just so shocking, and so well explained in the novel. I thought that Angels and Demons was possibly even better than DaVinci Code, although obviously both are extrordinary works. Kudos to Dan Brown for another great one, and keep them coming!
Rating:
Summary: Worth every minute
Review: I found this book to be one of the best "under-rated" books I've come across. Probably better in most respects than "Da Vinci", and more deserving of the great press than its sequel. Brown does a great job at keeping the reader both interested and motivated to turn the page...it's also a notch better than "Deception Point", based on the depth and quality of research that Brown clearly submerged himself. I've passed it onto several people and they couldn't have been more appreciative of the recommendation. Run...don't walk...to pick this one up!
Rating: 
Summary: Robert Langdon's first adventure as a symbologist-detective
Review: I read "Angels & Demons" after reading Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code," and I have to say that I do not think it matters what order you read the two books although there are clear indications this book was written first (Brown does several examples of blatant foreshadowing, including early on the idea that one square yard of drag will slow a falling body's rate of descent by twenty percent). The two books are similar in that Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon deciphers clues to try and solve one murder while trying to prevent others in a mystery that involves the secrets of the Catholic Church. In this book a physicist is murdered at CERN, the Swiss research facility, and branded will a symbol representing the Illuminati, the centuries old underground organization of scientists who have a vendetta against the Catholic Church. The ancient secret brotherhood has acquired a devastating new weapon of mass destruction and intends to bring down the Vatican (literally). Which book is better? My initial reaction would be that I liked "The Da Vinci Code" a bit more because so many of the clues were written out. When Langdon has to look over paintings, statues and other visual clues I find myself wishing Brown had supplied photographs in his book so that I could play along looking for clues (he does provide most of the requisite images at his website, but I did not know this until after the fact and I suspect most readers will not want to stop and go online to call up the photographs). Not that I had much success in my endeavors, but I did know that Leonardo Da Vinci wrote in his journals backwards so that I was ahead of Langdon for a half a page at one point. "Angles & Demons" is played out on a larger and more public stage than "The Da Vinci Code," and when you get to the conclusion of this novel you might find it a bit much, but that is one of the reasons they call it fiction. The biggest question in the debate over these books seems to be whether Brown is attacking the Catholic Church in his novels, which strikes me a bit odd after reading "Angels & Demons" since the Vatican is the target this time around. This novel is more about the long struggle between science and religion than anything else, and the position Brown takes seems to be that the two are ultimately compatible. I did my dissertation on the Scopes "Monkey" Trial of 1925 and in the spectacle of Clarence Darrow cross-examining William Jennings Bryan that is codified by the fictional "Inherit the Wind," history has forgotten that the original position of the Scopes defense was that there Genesis and evolution were compatible. Consequently, I have a lot of sympathy for Brown's position and I think a careful reading of the text offers as strong a critique of science as it does of religion. Certainly that ideal is represented by the man who is murdered to start off the story and whatever faults in the history and theology of the Catholic Church might be discussed, there are just too many men of devout faith in the narrative to support the idea Brown is out to get the Church. Nor do I have any real concerns with the extent to which Brown is playing with historical "facts." The whole idea here is to create a sense that the pieces of the puzzle fit together. I do not think for a second that these novels are true; all I need is to believe that they are plausible, so telling me that some statue's finger is pointed in the wrong direction if you go to Rome and see it for yourself is not going to matter to me because I understand how far the rules of the game apply to the real world. Even so, I think that Brown's factual foundation is more substantial than we will usually find under such circumstances, which would end up being a plus rather than a minus. Besides, I like all of the flashbacks to Langdon's discussions with his students (more classroom scenes in the future, please). Solving the puzzles is the key enjoyment of these novels and that part of the creative process makes up for Brown's tendency to overplay his red herrings and to hide his true villains in plain sight. Ultimately the game matters more than the characters or the plot. As soon as you know that there will be four more murders you realize that at least three of them have to happen because the game has to be played out to the end, so it is not until the frantic end game that your attention really perks up and it is at that point that Brown starts unloading a whole lot of really big surprises on his characters and his readers. In the final analysis the point here is neither history nor theology, but to tell an exciting adventure yarn where the hero gets by mainly on his intelligence rather than good looks and/or weaponry. This is a hero I can actually identify with for once and that is fine with me too.
Rating:
Summary: He tops DaVinci
Review: I first read the DaVinci Code and could not put that book down until I finished it in 3 days. I decided then to read Angels and Demons and while hard to believe found this book to be similar to DaVinci but much more captivating. I read this in 3 days also. I thought I knew about the Vatican but I sometimes got the feeling that D.Brown was a Cardinal in a previous life due to the historical facts, symbols and characters that he created in this well written suspenseful book.
I highly recommend it to all DaVinci fans..
Rating:
Summary: Even Better than The DaVinci Code
Review: I loved The DaVinci Code, so I had to pick up Angels and Demons. What a surprise to find this one is even better than its ultra-popular sibling! When I was privileged to sing for the Pope outside St. Peter's Basilica, I had the strange thought that the Piazza di San Pietro would be the perfect scene for a taut thriller involving a mass assassination or something like that. I envisioned a Tom Clancy-esque plot, with the hero coming in to save the world from destruction at the last second. Here Dan Brown has taken a similar idea but with an unlikely hero, the scholarly symboligist Robert Langdon, who also appears in DaVinci Code. A noted physicist who was renowned for his work linking the world of science with the world of God is brutally murdered, and all signs point to the Illuminati, a secret society created by the likes of Galileo, a society thought to be long dead. Along with the physicist's daughter, Langdon must solve a series of bizarre clues to save the Catholic Church from complete devastation. Those familiar with Rome will find themselves looking for the clues in their travel albums or the recesses of their minds and will be astonished to find them there. Like The DaVinci Code, the reader sometimes blurs the line between fact and fiction and is left wondering "What if?" If I could give this book 6 stars, I would. I cannot remember when I last read a book I enjoyed so thoroughly. If you like your thrillers tautly written and impeccably researched, you owe it to yourself to read Angels & Demons. Really.
Rating: 
Summary: Lots of information, lots of eye rolling lines....
Review: I liked this book, don't get me wrong. Dan Brown must know everything about everything. There cannot be a smarter author out there. With that being said, his smarts bleed into his writing sometimes and he becomes preachy at times, giving history lessons when a bomb is about to explode, or when someone is chasing one of his characters. At other times, characters sound like they are reading off the back of a toothpaste tube. His dialogue at times induced eye rolling, espcially when dealing with the religious themes in the book. If they made this book into a movie, I have a feeling there would be laughing where it wasn't intended. But done right, this book would make one heck of a movie. I'd pay to see it. The ending also left me stale, it seemed that Brown tacked on a twist at the end for the sake of having a twist at the end. I was digging the plot up until that point, then the rest was a bit of a let down. I have yet to read the Da Vinci Code, and I hope that it is better. Angels & Deamons is a definite page turner, it just could have been a lot better, IMO.
Rating:
Summary: A Suspenseful and Exciting Book
Review: To be perfectly honestly I haven't picked up a good fiction book in a long time (I blame textbooks and studying) but once I starting reading Angels and Demons I had a tough time putting it down. It's one of those books that really makes you think about whats going to happen next and Brown does a wonderful job of sending you in completely the wrong direction. The plot does sometimes get perhaps a little hard to swallow but nothing that would make you stop reading in frustration. One of the best things I found about the book is Brown's historical and scientific commentary which shows a lot of thought and reasearch went into creating the final product. A great read and one that I highly recommend to anyone who is even slightly interested.
Rating:
Summary: Haiku Review
Review: Science meets the Church.
I read after Da Vinci.
Characters the same.
Rating:
Summary: First rate thriller!
Review: If you'd pitched me the plot before I'd read it, I'd have laughed it off as outlandish. Yet Dan Brown knows how to sell a story and his construction of a stand off between the zealots in both science and the Roman church resonates. I found myself pausing to ponder the moral and spiritual dilemmas those whose would seek fusion between science and the bible face in their quest. But it was hard to ponder very long -- I always wanted to see what was going to happen next! I heartily recommend this book to those who appreciate a well-researched thriller, or just a great yarn! Bravo, Mr. Brown!
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