Rating: 
Summary: Mindbending
Review: This book was recommended to me by a good friend, a young man with a masters' degree in Mod. Eur. History with a fantastic background in philosophy and economics. Half the read I could not stop laughing, the other half I had to go back again and make certain what the hell I was reading. Though I enjoyed the intertwining conspiracy theories and the characters, Eco kind of left me in a lurch at the end; no different than the feeling I had after reading "For Whom The Bell Tolls." Worth a second even read during a lazy summer vacation.
Rating: 
Summary: Crusade through prose
Review: This is a great book, and by the end of the novel if your like me you will feel as if you have just been through a crusade of occult history. I must admit, it was hard going in places - the level of detail is nothing short of astounding. But it all comes together in the end, and I love the way the Eco leads you through all of this to end with a "joke" of sorts. Anyway, if your fed up reading traditional guff novels, give this a try - you may even learn something along the way.
Rating:
Summary: A magnificent, inclusive journey
Review: I won't pretend this book wasn't a hard slog. It was. It's long, dense and uses words I didn't know existed (and frequently, words that aren't English). But all this is necessary to create the thick, rich tapestry Eco weaves for us. With consummate style, we are taken on a journey of knowledge, culture, religion and philosophy that I, for one, experienced right alongside the book's characters. This book might not change your life, but it certainly changed the way I look at it. It's all what you make of it.
Rating:
Summary: Weird ... but strangely intriguing
Review: This book is an anomaly. Yes, all the criticisms are true. The characters are flat, the plot is full of dead ends, the author is clearly showing off in parts, many of the flash-backs are pointless and headache-inducing ... yet for all that, this book truly is compelling. And to level criticisms at it as a 'normal' novel seems to be missing the point entirely and is a great injustice.To view it as a literary romp with a strange sense of humour is a little more to the point. This is 'The Illuminatus! Trilogy' for modern readers ... Shea & Anton Wilson with tenfold more intelligence and authority. To have read this book is like having shared a very good joke with an Oxbridge don. It is like sitting through a series of lectures on medieval history, yet feeling like you've just come off a breathtaking roller coaster ride afterwards. Is this book life-changing ? Yes, in the sense that it has a strange power to make you want to read up on all that spooky Hermetic arcania, and about the world of secret socities ... but should one really need to take this work all that seriously ? After all, the protagonists in the story did that - and look where it got them !
Rating: 
Summary: the literary equivalent of "the emperor's new clothes"
Review: This is a dreadfully pretentious book with utterly flat and lifeless characters and puerile plot devices and coincidences. It's trumped up with a lot of ridiculous philosophy but, in the end, it completely collapses on its own pretentiousness. Anyone who says this is a "great book" is a fool and doesn't realize Eco has played a joke on him or her. It's just a shame you have to drag through this tedious 120-chapter tome to find out the mystery is that there is no mystery and the trick is that you've been tricked into reading hundreds of pages filled with thousands of ridiculous red herrings. To top it off, the English translation is weak and frequently downright awkward.
Rating: 
Summary: 2 1/2 stars
Review: I might end up giving away some details about the plot here, so if you haven't read the book, be warned. I'm afraid I have to weigh in with the naysayers on this one. This is all very subjective, of course, but here goes: The book was too enmeshed in its own love of scholarly gobbledygook. I wonder who amongst its readers really tried to fend their way through ALL those ENDLESS details about the templars, and the sculpting of the Plan. I can see trying to follow the details of the Plan if Eco was really trying to discover something, but since he's not, it really all becomes meaningless. And that, of course, is his point. Unfortunately, that little philosophical wrap-up at the end of the book did not, for me, justify the 600+ pages I waded through to get to it. The worldview expressed is depressing and even a little - forgive me - lazy. Basically, Eco's throwing up his hands and saying life is basically meaningless; to counteract this sense of meaninglessness, people invent meaning - like the Plan - to see them through. It's the tired old existentialist argument used (with greater brevity) by people like Hemingway, and it's thinly disguised with Eco's obvious love of history and obscure bits of information. I would give the book 2 1/2 stars if I could. Obviously a tremendous amount of effort went into it, and there were definitely times when it engaged me. I can see why some people found it an enjoyable read (drawn into a labyrinthine plot, a sense of mystery and history, etc.), but overall I was disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: ADVICE FOR THE READERS THAT GET INTIMIDATED BY THE BOOK
Review: This book has it all! Mystery, thriller, suspense, world history, masons, world conspiracy, voodoo, magic, computers trying to reproduce the true name of God, jewish mysticism , druids of the forests, underground tunels that connect strategic points of the planet, publishers and writers, knights of the temple, action all around the world through the past 2 milenia. YOU NAME IT. Centuries of conspiracy and battle for the domination of the world , unspeakable secrets passed upon generation to generation from a few chosen ones, build up until the last climactic pages of the book. ADVICE: The book is really worth for its money and it will keep you awake for a few days. You will refuse to close the book until you reach the end. In the beginning you will not understand a thing, what is going on, who are these people, what are they trying to do. Never mind, just carry on. Eco meant the book to be this way! Enjoy the book and if you dont understand some historical remarks never mind, just continue, dont stumble upon the little details and the dates, get the big picture. You will have plenty of time to think about it after you have finished but the main thing is to go entirely through the book and finish it. It will leave you with your mouth open. Dont let yourself think :I cant understand this, I am an idiot therefore I will not continue. No, just finish the book , at the end you will be rewarded as is the case with all of Ecos books. After all there is no such thing as "I dont understand the book", there is only "I didnt let myself free enough to understand it". Eco writes his books this way, they are only meant for the strong of spirit, people with perseverance that are willing to strugle in order to reach the ultimate truth that only the very few have mastered. His novels are deliberately cryptic but only to the point that they discourage the faint of hurt. For the few strong men that are willing to engage into the battle, all the mysteries and the hypes reveil themselfs at the end,like the petals of a rose in the spring. This is the REWARD, something central on Eco's novels. IN ORDER TO PROVE MY POINT ECO HIMSELF ADMITTED that he included the first hundred pages of pure history in the "Name of the Rose" just to discourage the readers that would not have the strenght to continue with the book. That was the PRICE! that the readers have to pay in order to reach the monastery up in the mountains that the story takes place. His editor suggested that he should completely remove this big part of the book but Eco denied! Going back to the PENDULUM, You should never forget that this book is a really mystery book. Not only for the heros of the book but also for you , the reader. There were times that I felt that I was involved in this world conspiracy and I may be in danger like the hero of the book. That is the trully amazing element of Eco. It gets the reader involved. And at the end you will have a completely different point of view about the world. Eco has said that the ultimate mystery book is the one that the READER is himself the killer! I definetely recommend the book, it will not dissapoint you.
Rating:
Summary: The cure for conspiracy buffs! `Eyes Wide Open'.
Review: I chain read, like smoke, and I was onto `The Holy Blood, The Holy Grail' (still the best one!) series of secret societies within the cabals of power, Mars mysteries, secret histories and texts, Jesus Christ's family tree and establishment cover-ups. I was beginning to find that these secrets were very well covered and highly profitable. Were they secrets at all? Or is the conspiracy that the only conspiracy is that of chance, accident, belief and interpretation - the contingency of life? The notion of real figures working behind the scenes (Mike Myer's `Dr. Evil) to dupe us all from the truth (which we cannot handle apparently!) is the real conspiracy or wishful thinking that anyone or anything has any real control of this world. This is the real `power' of the occult and its danger; that is, making others believe in your power to control life does indeed give you power. Apparently, the facists knew all to well of this oldest of all confidence games. But was there something to it? A double paradox that the surface theories only covered, that deeper more would be revealed - the mystery itself becomes the vanishing point of creation and destruction that initiates call upon within themselves: "... it's a geometric point; you can't see it because it has no dimension, it can't move, it doesn't rotate with the earth ... There is no `itself.' The Earth turns, but the point doesn't. That's how it is. ... I guess it's the Pendulum's business." "The greatest lie the devil ever told was that there is no devil." Through the infinite regression paradox and looking glass I went. One day I picked up `Foucault's Pendulum', I had read and deeply enjoyed `The Name of the Rose', and began reading. Although I had the background in this stuff, I still found it tough going; but Eco's `Mystery of the Mystery within the mystery' began to enchant. Eco's torrent of theories, text chases, rants on Templars, numerology, the Holy Grail, myterious figures, magic and the like constitute the Sam Spade like tone of the Narration Casaubon. But this `Maltese Falcon' is interior to the soul and alchemical.
Rating:
Summary: Intricate
Review: Well now, I didn't think it was THAT hard to understand. My biggest problem with this book was getting past the first couple chapters (the book starts near the end of the story), once I actually got rolling with this I loved it. There are some rather obscure references, but I feel you can understand the book even if you only partially understand the history. It certainly helps if you know who the Templars were/are, if you've heard of the Illuminati, are acquainted with Freemasons, etc. If you aren't versed in any of this you may be bored/confused. Some background books may help you out. "Born in Blood" or "The Temple and the Lodge", perhaps. I recommend this book to all my conspiracy-theory buddies as this is the master of all conspiracy-theories. Some of the flashbacks annoyed me and seemed as if they were filler, but they certainly helped to flesh out the characters so maybe I was just in a hurry to see how it ended. If you have some time and are at all familiar with the subject, I heartily recommend this book. I can't imagine it would make good light reading tho, this one takes some time and attention.
Rating:
Summary: You'd better have an unabridged dictionary handy....
Review: Umberto Eco is a major cause of headaches. Well, he was for me, at least. About seven years ago, I bought myself a paperback copy of Foucault's Pendulum at the university book store. It looked like an engaging plotline, the reviews were excellent, and it had a really neat cover. I realize now that most of the reviewers were probably intelligentsia-wannabes who didn't want to admit to the other reviewers they didn't have a clue what Umberto Eco was going on about. I remember seeing pictures of movie stars holding copies of Foucault's Pendulum in order to look brainy. Expecting some sort of smart cyber tale with a mystical flavour, I started reading. It was the densest prose I'd ever encountered, even worse than the Webster's unabridged dictionary's definition for "existentialism." Foucault's Pendulum is definitely not a cyber story. A word processor is the only computer, and there aren't any net-running scenes. Nevertheless, the mystical stuff is certainly there. Umberto Eco waxes philosophical for pages upon pages about word processors (and everything else) in a mystical fashion, all the while going off on Rosicrucian and Greater Key of Solomon tangents in languages like Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and medieval French. I slaved over Foucault's Pendulum for about a year, always making sure I had a copy of Webster's unabridged dictionary on hand. Unfortunately, it didn't help very much. You see, many of the words in the book are not in the dictionary. I think that in order to truly comprehend the intricacies of Foucault's Pendulum, a reader needs to be a polyglot with several PhDs in history, philosophy, occult studies, and sciences under her/his belt. Oh yes, and the reader should also have more than a passing familiarity with Sam Spade detective novels. This makes me wonder what sort of man Umberto Eco really is. The book proved to be too much for me in my undergrad days. I only got about a third of the way into the novel before giving up in consternation. Some time later, my husband made the cocky assertion he could read any English novel and fully comprehend it. I called his bluff and handed him my dusty copy of Foucault's Pendulum. I don't think he even made it as far as I did before he unceremoniously jammed the book back into its place on the shelf. Then, about a year or two ago, I watched The Name of the Rose, and the richness of the plot made me want to try reading the book again. So, I dragged the dusty book out of my bookshelf. I opened to where the bookmark was, and couldn't remember what the hellwas going on. I groaned aloud when I realized I would have to start all over from scratch. Once again, I began struggling my way through heavily obfuscated prose. The three-volume dictionary did not leave my side. I was determined to finish the book, and finish it I did in a scant month. Sure, I was irritable and walked around with a perpetual wrinkle ensconced between my eyebrows, but I finished it, darn it! And, with plenty of research on the side, I even understood (most of) it. Never before have I worked so hard to read a book. Now I have just begun to read Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln's The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. While reading the forward, I experienced a bit of déja vu. The subject matter is almost identical to the plotline of Foucault's Pendulum, albeit much easier to comprehend. A few pages later, I read how Umberto Eco was inspired to write his migraine of a novel from The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. Why couldn't I have read The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail first? It would have saved me a few brain cells. I guess it's because of the cover. The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail has a rather vanilla cover, and I'm drawn by shiny things. Foucault's Pendulum has the coolest foil embossing.....
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