Rating: 
Summary: An explosive secret leads to death and destruction.
Review: The protagonists in Dan Brown's best selling novel, "The Da Vinci Code," are Robert Langdon, a brilliant symbologist from Harvard and Sophie Neveu, a French cryptologist. Sophie's grandfather, Jacques Sauniere, was brutally murdered in the Grand Gallery of the Louvre Museum in Paris, where he was curator. The French police suspect that Langdon may be the killer, but Langdon flees after protesting his innocence. He teams up with Sophie to decipher the clues that Sauniere left behind in the minutes before he died. The two then embark on a difficult and dangerous search that leads them through France and London on the trail of the real killer."The Da Vinci Code" is filled with complex puzzles and arcane facts about such subjects as the history of the Roman Catholic Church, Leonardo Da Vinci's genius, and the origins of such words as "villain" and "heretic". If you like puzzles and obscure history as I do, then you may find these parts of the book intriguing. However, Brown does not completely succeed in writing a great thriller. The characters of Sophie and Robert are poorly developed. We get no sense of them as human beings. They are merely vehicles for the many set speeches that they make throughout the book, often along the lines of, "I've got it! Let me explain what this code means!" The dialogue is stilted, the villains are stock characters, and the author overuses italics and exclamation points to show the reader that a very important event is occurring. On the plus side, Brown certainly piqued my interest with his fascinating and tantalizing codes and his unusual tale of a secret so earthshattering that it drives people to kill.
Rating: 
Summary: Great read but an over-stated thesis
Review: This book is definitely absorbing. I read it in two days. Not only is it a quick read, but it peaked my interest in biblical history such that I've spent the days since finishing the book looking into various areas of history that Brown discusses. Although this is suffcient to earn five stars from me, it is hard to accept the more general claims that Brown makes in this book. He provides many interesting vignettes regarding how christianity absorbed various pagan symbols and rituals, but his over-arching claim that Christianity ushered in the modern era of misogyny is simply nonsense. Just a basic familiarity with Homer reveals that women were treated as chattel thousands of years before Christ or Nicea. Just about every major ancient ruler was male, and their myths invariably centered on males. While Christianity/Judaism may have been the first religion without an explicitly female goddess figure, that fact hardly distinguishes a misogynist world from a world of equality. Anyone accepting Mr. Brown's thesis must explain why the modern concept of female equality arose solely in nations with christian histories. Non-christian cultures have a horrible record regarding their female citizens. That certain African cultures retain female goddess symbols must be small consolation to the actual flesh and blood women who live there as distinctly second-class citizens.
Rating:
Summary: Great for Collection!
Review: This book is wonderful for collection! With relating pictures almost on each page to go along with the text, it's like you're in the adventure too! They add the sense of excitement! If you're a Dan Brown fan, this is a MUST get!
Rating: 
Summary: Curious about all the fuss
Review: To say this is a work of genius, as I've heard, is an overstatement. Sure, it's a fun book. There's a lot of action. There's a sufficient level of drama. Dan Brown's writing is such that the reader is brought into, and through the story, at a frenetic pace.
Speaking from a rather laid back Catholic's perspective, I'm not sure I'd consider this book to be the "new epiphany." It's ruffled some feathers simply because it's an idea that's seldom talked about. Scientists don't care too much, and the conservatives don't want to hear it. Quite frankly, if you are comfortable and strong in your faith (be it monotheism, atheism,or polytheism) than feel free to read this if you want to know what all of the fuss is about. If you're not grounded in your faith, or are lost, I'm not sure I'd recommend it.
Dan Brown paints a very good picture. His sense of adventure is laid into the pages quite well. This book will keep you wanting to read at times. Other times, I'm sorry to say, I was fine with closing the book, shutting the light off, and going to sleep. Other books (Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett and Gemini Contenders by Robert Ludlum) had that gripping suspense and believability that I lost hours of sleep.
The character development is alright (Langdon's character is developed in the prequel Angels & Demons). The plot is good. The pace is great. The descriptions of objects and settings are quite wonderful. However, in the end, I found myself saying "All of the fuss was for this?" I just think there was just too much fuss over this book. Controversial? Absolutely. A great work? I don't think so.
Rating:
Summary: Novel, not innovative
Review: Very well written and well paced, but poorly researched and rather contrived. Interesting, but essentially just a formulaic page turner.
| 
