Rating: 
Summary: Historically inaccurate anti woman, anti Catholic bigotry
Review: The book reads poorly, the author claims he has done his research when he hasn't. He endoirses Gnostic Gospels like Thomas to support the idea that Jesus was married when he wasn't, ignoring the fact that the Gospel of Thomas says women must become men to be saved. He claims the Pope shut down the Knights Templar and persecuted them in Rome, when the historical evidence in fact says that the Pope couldn't have persecuted them from Rome because he was in France at the time and the King of France Manipulated the Pope into supressing them. The Pope wasn't the bad guy, it was the king of France etc, etc, etc, etc......ad infinitum. It is another example of a bigot, who because his bigotry is socially acceptable to an athiestic society and media that like to distort the truth, gets a way with publishing bad literature and lying about his scholarship. If some of the evil Characters were Jewish instead of Catholic no one would think it was such a great book.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting ideas, mediocre thriller
Review: The book served as an introduction, at least for me (and I am not very knowledgeable in this area, to the world of 'alternative' religion. I don't know how much of what was told in this book resembles any degree of truth. But it makes you wanting to read more on this subject. That's what I first started to do upon completion of this novel. And it's great achievment of the author. At the same time, I found it to be quite lame thriller, contrary to many reviews. The plot lines are predictable in many cases. In addition, Dan Brown is not a very good writer. His style is somewaht 'wooden' (as was mentioned in one of the reviews of this book). And what about all this itallics - I found such widespread use of itallics very annoying. That's why I gave it four stars. This book has a very interesting content, which is delivered in imperfect way.
Rating: 
Summary: A very so-so read.....
Review: The book starts off interestingly enough, but lapses into a breathlessly conspiratorial style of story-telling that gets pretty tiresome after awhile. Brown's penchant for throwing in explanations of myriad bits of symbology, apparently for entertainment rather than embellishment, eventually proves distracting, too. Furthermore, the plot device of the "evil Church" ruthlessly and violently suppressing information supposedly "dangerous" to its existence is getting pretty over-used these days. (The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi manuscripts have been part of the public domain for a long time now, so I doubt the Church is really too worried about them at this point.) And frankly, I found the trotting out of a mish-mash of various conspiracy theories propounded by numerous esoteric and occult societies of the late 19th and early- to mid-20th centuries, presented in this novel as purportedly widely-known and accepted history, a bit much. I hope most readers have the good sense to remember that this is fiction and not take this all too seriously...or at least do their homework first!Overall, I thought Umberto Eco did a much better job with this subject matter in Focault's Pendulum. It is a much more subtle, albeit dense, presentation, but in many ways much more entertaining, and has a considerably more eerie and sinister flavor to it.
Rating:
Summary: Jesus was married!?
Review: The book starts out GREAT! Then gets weird for people who are looking for a Christian thriller. Well writen, but the ending is just not up to the hype.
Rating:
Summary: Forget the controversy - nothing new here, folks
Review: The book starts out promising but quickly turns into a flat "thriller" complete with preposterous plot twists and cookie-cutter narrative. The female lead is there only to provide an audience for Langdon's many lectures on symbology, while Langdon himself seems to exist only to lecture on the story's religious premise and to treat the female character like a helpless damsel. Did I mention she works for the French version of the FBI? The book's premise is interesting - the true nature of the Holy Grail - but is far better suited to a history book than a thriller that feels like a rejected movie screenplay. The overly simplistic clues are especially frustrating. One of Brown's more "clever" puzzles is this one: an orb of "rosy flesh and seeded womb" associated with a certain author of the laws of physics. Oh, and it's a five-letter word. It takes a Harvard professor several chapters to figure this one out? Puh-leeze. Where's the suspense in something the reader knows pages and pages ahead of what the author reveals? The anticlimactic ending is a complete letdown, since the story never deviated from my step-by-step predictions. (...)
Rating: 
Summary: Dan Brown makes best book I have ever read!
Review: The book the Da Vinchi Code is the greatest thriller I have ever read. It pieces together all the mysterys about the bible into a perfect suspence action thriller. I loved the way that the book starts out with a murder and that the whole book is on what the victim did to pass on Da Vinchi's code to his grand daughter who he hasn't seen in about 14 years. I think that Dan Brown took a big risk in publishing this book and I think that the risk totally paid off and he got a lot of people on his side. I liked the idea of showing the church's bad side and on how they like to keep things the way they are and that they would kill to keep the code very secret. All and all I think that this book is very good. Dan Brown, people may be against you in your controversial book but you can assure one thing, I am your fan.
Rating: 
Summary: Not quite the Holy Grail of thrillers
Review: The book unfolds in fairly typical thriller fashion: the protagonist, mistakenly accused of murder, finds himself in possession of something for which the real murderer will kill again. Therefore he must run from the police and the bad guys alike, while seeking to solve the murder mystery. The bad guys appear to be part of a larger conspiracy - are they trying to obtain, reveal, or destroy an ages-old secret? As he works to solve the mystery, biblical scholar Robert Langdon draws on - and explains endlessly - his research regarding secret religious societies and alternate interpretations of key Christian symbols. I found the history to be interesting if not always accurate. The historical material is grafted onto the basic thriller format without being integral to it, and that is my key criticism of this book. Unlike, say, Eco at his best, Brown did not make me feel the weight of the esoteric topic under investigation. Without giving away all the details, I will say that I became increasingly skeptical that the secrets in question would be so earth-shattering if revealed; rather they would be as open to interpretation as the more traditional Biblical canon. Still, Brown kept me turning the pages even as I felt increasingly frustrated with the clunky predictability of the plot.
Rating:
Summary: Fun ride and unexpected invitation to read religious history
Review: The book was a fun roller coaster ride with a somewhat insipid ending. What I enjoyed most were the references to differing opinions on how the Bible, particulary the New Testament, was put together. Take the apple in Eden. It is not even mentioned as the forbidden fruit in Genesis. It was Catholic priests, who wanted people to stop believing in religions that saw the apple as a holy fruit (mostly Gnostic), who said it was the apple specifically. Politics and practicality ruled the selection of gospels for the New Testament. I do not suggest any malice in this, not even Emporer Constantine's hand in the building of Christianity (even though his involvement evenutally led to the persecution on another group of people).Learning more just helps me to better decide how I wish to embrace religious faith. I thank Dan Brown for helping me look into all this further for my own understanding.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting, but....
Review: The book was entertaining, but too much background information. There are many excellent, faster-paced historical mysteries such as The Patriote Proposition, listed in zshops.
Rating:
Summary: A combination of Soaps and Batman
Review: The book was well written and it kept your interest. There were a few problems, however, that left me wondering how this book could be so popular. First, the author constantly leaves you hanging. He makes you wait several chapters to find out what the Cardinals said to the Bishop, or what was in the box, or what was seen at the ritual, or whatever. Two or three items at all times, even when it doesn't add anything to the plot development. Its like watching a daytime soap opera that always leaves a few unanswered questions to be answered after the commercial, or in the next episode. Second, the clues the main characters decipher are a way too far fetched, and its hard to believe the they could solve them so quickly and repeatedly. It constantly reminded me of Adam West and Burt Ward in the Batcave solving obscure clues from the Riddler - and it was about as believable. Still not a bad read, just seems overrated.
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