Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating Thrill Ride for the Mind
Review: I've read thousands of thirllers but this one set itself apart by not just feeding my mind with twists and turns of a plot line, but with a truly interesting underlying story. I do not fancy myself a conspiracy theory fan, but I have to admit this one lit my fire. The author keeps us interested by feeding us his story on three different levels. There is the mystery of the past, the puzzles left by the victim found in the early pages, and the chase for our heros lives throughout the book. The book takes us through the ages, in and out of the church, through cities and countries. Rarely has a book so peaked my interest. In the end, I found myself on the internet doing research about DaVinci and the Holy Grail - not something I have ever thought about before. I seriously recomend this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Bad history, bad theology, and unforgivably bad fiction
Review: I've seldom been so disappointed in a book on so many levels. It's very bad, misleading, and agenda-driven from a historical and theological standpoint. However, I'm often willing to overlook those things in support of a good story. This is a very weak story, with wooden prose, poorly-drawn characters, gaping holes in the plot, and terribly transparent plot devices. My husband and I finished the book, but were mostly driven by how bad it was and "could it get any worse." My eleven year old read the book, convinced that it was going to be great because so many of his middle-school/jr high peers loved it. The book did keep him enthralled over three days of Christmas break. At one point he asked me whether the Teabing character's polio was somehow symbolic or significant. I thought about it for a while and responded that I didn't think so; just another dumb plot device (along with the big dumb Albino and the red-headed female cryptologist). After he finished the story he commented that I was wrong: Sir Leigh is crippled in order to foreshadow the lame ending. I think he has a point.
Rating:
Summary: Spell Binding
Review: I, who rarely read fiction, have been spell bound by this book. Even if one does not like murder mysteries, the knowledge and research that is contained in these pages is an education unto itself.
BUY this book, it is wonderful, and then share it with your friends. Now we have something to discuss that is not the usual drivel tht is found in the news, on television, etc.
What a great author, the writing is crisp and clear.
Rating:
Summary: Read "Foucault's Pendulum", rather than this pap....
Review: If "Da Vinci Code" sounds interesting to you, you would be far better served by turning to Umberto Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum", which at least makes intellectual demands on the reader. It is indeed depressing when truly trivial books, as this one is, become best sellers.
Rating:
Summary: It's a novel for goodness sake.
Review: If I wanted factual art history I would go buy a reference book. All this rigamarole about not enough research is hogwash. Good grief this is FICTION! That's why it says "Novel" on the front. Let the guy have some artistic license, geez. He's earned it.
It was a page-turner I couldn't put down. It starts out with action and keeps your pulse going all the way through. I loved figuring out all the puzzles as I went along. Very much like the puzzles in Rome from his previous book "Angels & Demons".
For everyone else who wants complete accuracy, might I suggest some non-fiction?
Rating: 
Summary: Where's the fact in this fiction?
Review: If I were to write a thriller featuring a high-speed car chase and wrote with what very little I know about cars and how they handle, I'd ruin the story. I doubt that I would find a publisher. In addition to several 'venial sins,' there are many serious lapses, mortal sins that make one wonder why the publisher went ahead with this project.The pain of childbirth did not give birth to the "idea" of original sin. Genesis, which came into written form in the 11th or 10th century before Christ, used that pain as one of a half-dozen symbol sets (joy and pain in childbirth) of the ambiguity-good and evil-brought into God's good world by the sin of Adam and Eve. The Hebrew canon or official list of books that constitute the Bible was determined by a rabbinical council near the end of the 1st century, and the list of what constituted the "New" Testament was evidently fairly well accepted by early Christian communities by the middle of the 2nd century.
Constantine make Sunday the day of worship. From the earliest days, Jewish-Christians observed the Sabbath, which ended on Saturday evening, and then, the same evening when the first day of the week begins, they concluded the Sabbath feast with a Eucharist to commemorate the resurrection of the Jesus. They gave significance to the day as the first day of the new creation (a reference to Genesis and the creation of the world). If pictures of the Egyptian Isis nursing Horus became the blueprint for our modern images of the Virgin Mary nursing the baby Jesus, then the blueprint was hidden for a millennium. In earlier depictions, Mary is regal, seated by the side of Jesus. The first depictions of Mary nursing Jesus are medieval. Altars are found in the Bible, not just in pagan religions. Communion with the divinity is indeed found in pagan religions, but the Eucharistic consumption of Jesus' body and blood comes from Jesus' own transformation of the ritual of the Jewish Seder (or, possibly, a chaburah meal), not from paganism. The divinity of Jesus was not voted on at Nicea in 325. Belief in the divinity was firmly in place in the earliest Christian communities. Consider only John's Gospel, which was in existence at the beginning of the 2nd century. What was debated strenuously and eventually passed at Nicea was the introduction into a statement of belief of what heretofore had been a philosophical term: homoousios or, 'of the same substance.' The Gnostic gospels were suppressed not on the basis of their depiction of Jesus as human, but because they are fanciful accounts of miracles and distant travels. The four 'winning' gospels are really expanded passion/resurrection proclamations with few of the details that are indispensable to biography: childhood accounts, what Jesus did for the first 30 years of his life, etc. More than likely, the gospels of Philip and Mary and Peter and all the rest didn't make the cut because they went way beyond proclaiming the good news of the saving death and resurrection. The Dead Sea scrolls contain Hebrew and inter-testamental writings, not gospels. They have interest to Christians only as witnesses to the events that formed a background for the ministry of Jesus and travails of the early church. Mary Magdalene, the prostitute. It is true that Gregory the Great confused the identities of Mary of Magdala and the woman who was a sinner. Whether that culminated a smear campaign in the early church is far from certain. Some 'Fathers of the Church" called Mary 'the apostle of the apostles." Social decorum at the time of Jesus did favor marriage, but there were brotherhood societies (chaburah) and religious communities. Scholars today are not sure if the Last Supper was a brotherhood meal or a Seder. In either case, it would not have been surprising for a celibate teacher to gather the family of his disciples for either of those activities. The tribe of Benjamin is not a royal tribe. Neither is the tribe of Juda, the other of the 12 tribes that survived the Assyrian conquest when the 10 'lost' tribes disappeared. But the family of David of the tribe of Juda was a royal family. 'Q' stands for Quelle (German for source). It refers to a hypothesis favored by biblical scholars of all major persuasions: a common source of the sayings of Jesus might pre-date and underlie the sayings that are found, in near word for word identity, in Matthew, Mark and Luke. This source may have been incorporated into the synoptic gospels, each of which has its unique character. No one believes that such a source would have been written by Jesus in his own hand. Shekinah is a word meaning 'the presence or shining forth of God' and was a circumlocution for the inhabitant of the Holy of Holies, whose name, YHWH, could never be pronounced. When the Israelites said that the Shekinah dwelled or pitched tent in the Temple, they meant that YHWH did so.
A constant message of the prophets was condemnation of those Israelites who forsook YHWH for Baal and his consort, Astarte. Intercourse with Astarte's Temple prostitutes was an act of sacred mimicry that was supposed to guarantee fertility in one's fields and livestock. The practice was a constant temptation to Israelites to forsake their faith in YHWH. YHWH is not derived from Jehovah. It's just the other way around. Hebrew never showed vowels, only consonants such as the sacred YHWH. For that reason, ancient pronunciations are guesswork. Whenever Jewish readers come across this tetragrammaton, they substitute for it the word ADONAI, which means 'Lord.'Someone in the 16th century evidently asked a Jewish person to pronounce YHWH and got ADONAI. So he took the ADONAI vowel sounds--A,O and A--and inserted them between the four consonants, coming up with JAHOVAH (or Jehovah).
Rating:
Summary: Despite the hype, a mediocre book at best
Review: If it had been better written, and if the development of plot & characters had been more thorough, then this would have been a more enjoyable book to read. As it is, "The Da Vinci Code" is a generally not good book that occasionally rises to the lofty heights of a mediocre work of fiction. It certainly does not merit all of the hype it has gotten. Judged strictly on the standards of a mystery novel, there is little to distinguish this book. The excitement "The Da Vinci Code" has generated rests not in its literary merits, but rather on the supposed "historical truths," sensational in nature, upon which the story is based. Unfortunately, huge chunks of Brown's material have been lifted from the book "Holy Blood, Holy Grail," by mssrs. Baigent et al. While "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" is in itself a very entertaining book, it is also the worst example of pseudohistorical conspiracy theory masquerading as genuine historical scholarship. Most of the theories within "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" are (even by the authors' own admission!) pure speculation that cannot be supported by historical evidence. Brown appears to have cobbled together a few other conspiracy theories, relating to the Priory of Sion & Rennes-le-Chateau (all equally dubious). He also puts forth the ludicrous but hilarious contention that the Emperor Constantine practically pulled the notion of Christ's divinity out of thin air --- a contention so easily disproven by the historical record that it hardly merits mentioning. Mostly, however, his "exhaustive historical research" seems to rest with lifting big chunks of material from "Holy Blood, Holy Grail." Anybody with a few minutes to kill can search the internet for sources that can easily debunk just about all of the historical "facts" that are cited in this novel. When the validity of the history evaporates, the sensational nature of the novel similarly disappears. One suspects that Brown knows that he is mostly re-hashing a bunch of pseudohistorical gobbledygook, but is banking on the general ignorance of his readers, and it appears that in this case, his research was (for once) both thorough & accurate.
Rating:
Summary: Educated People Like This Book?
Review: If one regards this as fiction, I would rate this over-long book as "fair." I cannot believe that so many people are intrigued by it. Yes, I read the whole thing and I followed through with some research. There is nothing new in this book; it's all been covered before without any proof that this is authentic. I belong to a very high level book club with a lot of liberal, educated women (like myself) and most of them thought it was a fascinating read. I think it was a very well crafted (but poorly written) book, and can't believe that so many people regard it as a true book that reveals this dastardly deed that the "church" has hidden for centuries. You mean none of the reformers from Henry VIII to Luther to Calvin wouldn't have known about this secret and would have revealed itif it were true. Not exactly trash, but not worth this hype. The author did create a commercial success and I know very few people who haven't read it. My name was 45th on the waiting list at the local library, so I bought it. What a waste of money. I am trading it in at the local Book Swap Shop, where I am sure it will be welcomed and sell rapidly. At least I will be able to receive another (hopefully better) book in its stead.
Rating:
Summary: P T Barnum was right
Review: If only I had 1000 acres of Florida swamp land; I would solicit all of the folks giving this hardbound nonsense a 4 star review. This book reads like it was written by a National Enquirer staffer. Truly a side show that would have made Barnum
drool.
Rating:
Summary: It could have been a contender
Review: If only it didn't go to seed at the end. And if only the prose were better. And if only the sooper-dooper smart characters were actually sooper-dooper smart (at times they acted as if they were characters in a Teen Movie). Yes, thank goodness for Eco.
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