Rating: 
Summary: Fabulous Read
Review: I really enjoyed this book. I thought the author tied a lot of the Grail Lore in very nicely. I found a lot of the DaVinci information new & refreshing & came back to a lot of the stuff that I knew about the Templars, early Catholic Church & the Gnostic Gospels.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing
Review: I really enjoyed this book.
I was done in less than two days.
I liked the chapter being short as one has to cook and tend to the kids as well.
It is amazing what da Vinci left behind. It is amazing what this novel reveals.
One is tempted to stop the read and start doing research immediately .If there is only half of the facts described real facts, it is simply unbelievable.
I am debating to give up another weekend for another Dan Brown.
Rating: 
Summary: Good start, mediocre finish
Review: I really liked the start of the book with a lot of historical detail and intrigue about real organizations. As the book goes on, however, it gets more and more trite and predictable. The characters are not very well developed and you don't really care about them. It turns out more like a soap opera than a really good book. It is very readable, however.
Rating: 
Summary: Great story
Review: I really liked this book, but there have been enough positive reviews that I will not be able to contribute anything that hasn't already been said, so I will comment on where I think this book needed a little more work.I wasn't as engulfed from the start as many reader's have stated. I thought the first 100 or so pages were very slow at best. The book starts off with Sauniere being murdered and with little time left, leaves many symbolic messages in the museum that need to be decoded due to the high security needed for the keystone, you would think the same security or even a little more would be needed for the golden KEY to this stone, nope, just WRITE the address on the key is good enough. My only guess is that he got tired of coming up with codes and puzzles protecting this key all his life, he wanted a few minutes of peace as he lay dying. Our buddy Dan Brown seemed to be reaching in some parts of the book. I mean come on, I can buy the whole Jesus was married, the Catholic religion is based on other religions, and the Vatican will spare no expense to keep the truth hidden, but to claim Walt Disney is a pagan worshipper because he made cartoons like Snow White and Cinderilla is just a little tough to believe. And Sophie (the cryptogopher). Who is giving this girl a job?! I've seen tougher puzzles on a box of apple jacks that this girl couldn't crack. Seemed like she was only any help by giving input relating to childhood games she would play with her grandpa. Surely the French have higher standards than that when seeking new law officers. The villian, Teabing, isn't the smartest bad guy in the bunch either. As our 3 heros are on their quest to find and unearth holy grail (exactly what the villian wants) he starts shooting up the place and gets arrested, I mean, why not wait until you've found the grail or at least the map before making a big scene. But seriously, I liked the book. Great read, it picks up, you just have to play along. The Da Vinci messages were by far the best parts of the book!
Rating:
Summary: Grabs you on Page 1
Review: I really liked this book. I couldn't put it down. I thought this was one of the best stories I've read for quite some time (ok the plot stretches a little thin at the end, but ...).
I'm really looking forward to Dan Brown's next book.
Rating:
Summary: Report from Paris: Dan Brown's "facts" aren't
Review: I really loved "The Da Vinci Code" when I first read it a month ago. I devoured 20 pages every evening, and every evening I looked forward to my next fix. Dan Brown has created a really exciting thriller, and what makes it especially appealing is that it is based on a lot of historical information that I found very interesting. Although "The Da Vinci Code" is fiction, Dan Brown writes in a prolog the following: "FACT: ... All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents and secret rituals in this novel are accurate." This added to my liking of the book, convincing me that Dan Brown really was providing a thriller built around a factual framework. Last week I was in Paris, and decided to bring "The Da Vinci Code" with me and to relive some of the exciting Paris scenes "on site", so to speak. My first stop was the church of Saint-Sulpice. Sure enough, the "rose line" described by Dan Brown was there, strange as it sounded from the description in the book. Sitting in the huge old church and listening to the beautiful organ music while rereading the relevant chapters of "The Da Vinci Code" was quite an experience! On to the Louvre, with the expectation of an even greater feeling of being right there where the (fictitious) action had occurred. But there I encountered the sad truth: Dan Brown's descriptions of various aspects of the Louvre are simply false. The most blatant and problematic discrepancy concerns "La Pyramide Inversée", which plays an important role in the book. According to "The Da Vinci Code" this inverted pyramid is situated within the Louvre, such that one passes it after entering the main pyramid and going from there to the Denon Wing of the Louvre. Also, the tip of this inverted pyramid is described as being six feet from the floor below it, and the tiny pyramid below the inverted pyramid is described as looking like it protrudes up from down below the floor. Reality is quite different. "La Pyramide Inversée" is actually outside of the Louvre building proper. It is in the middle of an underground shopping mall between the two wings of the Louvre, between a Virgin Megastore (CD's, DVD's, etc.) and an Esprit shop (fashion clothes). Furthermore, it actually comes down to about three feet from the floor, and the tiny pyramid under it looks like it just sits on top of the floor. The other major discrepancy concerns the way Dan Brown describes how Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu meet in a public lavatory in the Louvre. The book says, "Here at the westernmost tip of the Denon Wing, the north-south thoroughfare of Place du Carrousel ran almost flush with the building with only a narrow sidewalk separating it from the Louvre's outer wall." Wrong again. There are no public lavatories at the western tip of the Denon Wing. The north-south street that goes around Place du Carrousel does not go past the western tip of the Louvre, it cuts through the Louvre in the middle of the two wings. But there aren't any public lavatories there either so the action that is described as taking place there is not possible. Nit-picking? Perhaps. But if Dan Brown is cutting corners with "facts" that he proclaimed to be correct, what about the rest of the historical facts that made the book so interesting? Did he make up or modify these facts too? The assumption that this is probably the case has become unavoidable for me, and this reduces my liking of the book significantly. There are a lot of other details in "The Da Vinci Code" that I found incorrect or very unlikely when I first read the book, but none of them fell into the category of something that Dan Brown had claimed to be authentic. However, the architecture of the Louvre is specified as being correct, and it isn't, and that's where credibility is damaged, and the appeal of the book as being a great thriller based on a framework of reality is also damaged.
Rating:
Summary: The Fugitive meets Indiana Jones meets The Omen
Review: I really wanted to give this book a five star rating, but was slightly disappointed with the ending. Not the ending I would have chosen, but then again I am not writing the book. Very good read. Chapters set-up for moving along at a fast pace. Characters were very good and interesting. I have 18 years of Catholic School education and did not find any of the subject matter disturbing. This is a work of fiction, the author has the right to make whatever conclusions he wants. The societies described in the book do exist. Every society has deviant
characters and monsters, this does not make an entire society bad. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys Indiana Jones, touch of the Fugitive (innocent man seemed to be framed)and the Omen. This book did make me wonder about the societies talked about. Went on Yahoo and did some research, very interesting. Good read for the summer.
Rating: 
Summary: But of course! The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch!
Review: I really would not have been surprised if one of Dan Brown's woefully inane characters made a similar statement. The Davinci Code is an incredulous monument to ignorance, sensationalism, and utterly graceless writing. The latter fault is the biggest crime foisted upon the reading public. It astounds me when people laud this book as "well-written," when his style is virtually indistinguishable from that of any book from the Hardy Boys series. The characters are not compelling or even remotely likeable, and the "plot" is rammed down the reader's throat with no sense of aesthetic or pacing. It has the same intellectual and spiritual benefits as listening to the massacre of a litter of kittens at a high decibel. It reads not like a true novel, rather like a pitch for a made-for-TV movie. Yet Brown's mockery of good taste does not end with childish storytelling or wooden language. Much of his history is suspect as well. While I will not pretend to know everything about the subject, what I do know about history conflicts with Brown's interpretation. It's not that Brown outright lies, rather misunderstands facts or takes them out of context. For example, he claims that Constantine was a die-hard pagan who only converted at his death-bed. Nevertheless, baptism on one's death-bed was the modus operandi for Christianity at the time; the thinking being that since baptism completely washes away one's sins and is a one-time only deal, being baptised moments before death was the best way to ensure eternal paradise. Thus, Constantine was like virtually every other Christian at the time. This is only one example of Brown's shallow understanding of history. This book is a complete waste of time. Not only does it lack in any artistic merit, but its history is suspect, and moreover does not even have "entertainment value." If you're looking for entertainment, check out Monty Python.
Rating: 
Summary: just disappointed
Review: I really, really, REALLY wanted to like this book. The premises and subject matter hit my sweet spot. I got sucked in for the first few chapters, then I started getting angry. Repetitive suspense about things I stopped caring about, and factoid paragraphs slammed into the middle of the story as if taken verbatim from a 3x5 note card. "Okay, I need to throw this scholarship in........HERE!" I'm really not that hard to please. But if I'm going to help an author get rich, for chrissake, I'd at least like him to take some care and try to weave a mildly intelligent tapastry with the story and the scholarship, as if he really, truly cared about real storytelling. I will say, though, that if every history professor took up their subject with the same spirit as Mr. Brown, every child would be a historian. But for stories, this just makes me want to run back and hunker down with my David James Duncan and John Kennedy Toole and Flannery O'Connor.
Rating:
Summary: Best Mother's Day gift
Review: I received the Da Vinci code several weeks ago but with limited reading time, held off until this Mother's Day to take my "day off" to read. What a wonderful gift. Though a thriller, a genre I love, the book was exceedingly well written and a page turner from the first to last. Brown's exhaustive research is well balanced and informative. The ultimate gift however was the underlying theme of the necessary balance between the feminine and masculine. Thank you Mr. Brown.
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