The Da Vinci Code

Rating:
Summary: Rich Plot.. .. Heavily Researched... Faced Paced
Review: THE DA VINCI CODE - the name of the book alone gets a reader's attention. This tome is a suspenseful, intelligent thriller using coverups, vengeance and secret societies. Holding one's interest throughout the book, Dan Brown catches the reader's eye and mind beginning with a violent, sadistic murder in the setting of the famous Louvre in France. A riddle is found by the victim's body which lends and leads to clues found in artist Da Vinci's work. The reader is transported on a journey of search for the Holy Grail. The author's ability to use consistent, thorough research adds to the prominent interpretation of Western historical events, as exciting as the believable methods of the murder investigation. Setting aside one own's personal beliefs in the existence of truth... THE DA VINCI CODE is among the most interesting, entertaining novels. On a negative note, Dan Brown could have been more descriptive about the physical appearances of the heroes allowing the reader to better image the characters.
On balance it is a good read.
Recomended read - THE NUMBERED ACCOUNT by Christopher Reich

Rating:
Summary: "Three may keep a secret. . . ."
Review: The Da Vinci Code begins with an engrossing prologue that sets up all the elements of a swashbuckling mystery thriller, but the book deteriorates immediately afterwards. Despite the interesting subject matter, author Dan Brown flounders at writing suspense and creates characters too stale and clichéd to carry the story forward in an engaging way. Following the successful opener, Brown begins the action with a corny formal introduction to his protagonist, Robert Langdon, a debonair academic recycled from an earlier novel whom Brown clearly plans to parlay into a franchise of future bestsellers. Brown isn't sure how to characterize Langdon or the supporting cast and prefers to typecast, simply namedropping the Hollywood leading man he imagines playing his hero in the movie adaptation. (Hint: it's no coincidence that Langdon seems a crude knockoff of Indiana Jones, minus the gritty personality and rugged wardrobe which make the latter interesting.)

None of the book's literary flaws are as grating, however, as the dialogue, which Brown renders so clumsily that it reminded me of nothing so much as a story submitted in college creative writing by one of the dimmer bulbs in the class. Readers will quite literally cringe during most dialogue and especially during two flashback scenes whose inclusion in the book is downright perplexing, one in which Langdon lectures college students on pagan sex (or something) and another in which Langdon visits a prison to conduct an advanced seminar on Leonardo Da Vinci with the hardened inmates. The words Brown puts in their mouths positively fail the laugh test. Let's just say Brown is quite clearly not a dutiful researcher of the relevant vernacular. These scenes thankfully end quickly, but the awkwardly constructed dialogue between Langdon and the female lead is relentless, inducing Richter-scale cringing at the mere contemplation of the inevitable sex scene (which Brown mercifully leaves to the imagination but which shall certainly figure more prominently in the movie, should one be made).

Yet the dialogue is for the most part not at all flirtatious and is most frustrating when written in the same formal narrative tone as a history textbook. This is the device Brown uses whenever he must give readers some background on Da Vinci or early Christianity. Rather like the know-it-all scientist figure in every Michael Crichton novel, Langdon or another character appears periodically to succor readers with dry soliloquies that also serve as the Cliffs Notes to the stale revelations of the upcoming chapter. Despite the bad writing and deus-ex-machina quality of these diversions, some are actually fairly interesting and probably the only motivation available to actually finish the book, since the "suspense" is largely illusory. Each of the numerous plot twists is predictable fifty to a hundred or more pages in advance, so much so that it would be hard to identify which developments Brown intended to be surprises but for his narrative intervention: Brown kindly informs us that a character is "stunned" or "speechless" whenever he unleashes such impotent bombshells, apparently to compensate for his failure to arouse these emotions in readers.

Worse still, when one looks to the supposed mystery at the heart of the novel, one realizes that "there is no there there." So much of the mystery unravels from the characters talking to one another -- and so little from their actually doing anything -- that by the end it seems the book would not have been substantially different if Langdon had simply stayed in his hotel room and conducted a lecture into a Dictaphone. Most of the lectures concern the secret society bearing the ominous appellation "The Priory of Sion," but if the plot has any credibility the Priory utterly failed to keep anything secret, since every character knows all there is to know about it (and constantly tells us). That's adequate if one approaches The Da Vinci Code as a fictionalized historical essay, for whatever that's worth, but as a suspense novel it fails. By the end Brown has little to reveal that he hasn't already told us, and the suspense concludes not with a bang but a whimper.

Rating:
Summary: Less Erudite But Intriguing
Review: The Da Vinci Code bleeds research revealed by the erudite Umberto Eco's Foucalts Pendulum and that of other novels. Written in Hollywood style, the character development is minimal and language was used in an uninteresting style.

I should disclose that while reading the novel, I cared less about the characters than I did about the information being revealed. It was a indeed intriguing and a must read.

Rating:
Summary: Da Vinci Fraud
Review: The Da Vinci Code blurs the lines between fiction and fact - in a way that comes across to me as deceptive, false and willfully misleading - such that many readers actually believe the book exposes the truth about "the Church." And many more wonder what is true and what is "fiction." As a parish priest, I have spoken with countless confused people - who have read the book, and simply don't know what to make of the supposedly factual remarks by the book's "scholarly" characters.

I like historical fiction - James Michener, Ken Follett, and Umberto Eco are favorites of mine. By different degrees of creative brilliance, Michener, Follett and Eco have each written books which merge bible or church history with legend and their own invention. Michener and Follett are known for a high degree of factual content in their novels, and Umberto Eco is himself a university academic.

Eco is handy for a comparison with Dan Brown. At least three of Eco's books - Name of the Rose, Foucault's Pendulum and Baudolino -- involve an intellectually challenging and delighting blend of invention and historical fact concerning the Church. Eco himself is rather like the real-life version of Dan Brown's Robert Langdon character. The Robert Langdon character in Angels and Demons and Da Vinci Code is a professor of the fictional discipline called "symbology" - Umberto Eco is a professor of the real-life academic discipline called semiotics. Eco is an agnostic - with no Christian agenda at all. Meanwhile, author Dan Brown appears to have an explicitly anti-Christian sensibility. As well, Eco often writes fantastic stories involving the Church, the Knights Templar, Post Modern philosophy, etc. Sort of like Brown.

But the difference between the two appears to be this: Eco doesn't make claims of fact which anybody with a basic church history text and a Bible dictionary can demolish in under five minutes. Brown does. Moreover, it seems that Brown mixes fact with open fraud. Yet, Brown could have written pretty much the same book, without making up a single historical fact. He could have criticized historic Christianity, taken up the cause of women, and triumphed the place of the "sacred feminine" within the factual context of real Church history. He likewise could have retold the same Holy Grail stuff - with little or no need to invent anything outside of the now vast canon of established Grail Lore.

Now, I basically enjoyed the Da Vinci Code, except for those times when I saw an outright factual lie and felt my blood pressure go up. And I will never have time to address every single error made by The Da Vinci Code, but I hope to address the things, which drove me the most nuts.

Most important, perhaps, I address the themes raised by the book, which are of great importance for Modern Christians. Most important of these are: where is the feminine side of Biblical theology and our understanding of the divine; what roles did women have in the early church of the first two or three generations; how did the early church grapple with gnosticism, the creation of the canon of Scripture, and the eventual rise of "imperial Christianity...

Rating:
Summary: Good Mystery, Bad History
Review: The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown is a gripping mystery novel. The story moves on four fronts: the hero and heroine, the head of a Roman Catholic organization, the chief inspector of the French police and a fanatical murderer. Like checkers on a checkerboard the chapters move these pieces of the story in turn until they all reach home row at the end. The author is able to maintain suspense throughout the story so that it has momentum to the very last page, not letting the mystery completely dissolve until the end. It is not the nature of this book to probe deeply into the human character, the nature of reality or to generate beautiful prose. It reads like a movie script, al la Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The author uses two characters as experts on everything, especially Christianity and some of its historical struggles. Because the book is fiction it is able to build its own picture of Christianity and the church without regard to historical accuracy. It does convey a patronizing attitude toward the church and its faith, an attitude common place now and throughout the history of the church.

Theirs is an old scenario: Jesus was a great man whose movement got hijacked by powerful people in Roman society and transformed into a secular power. Their version adds the proposition that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and the two produced children. This story line sets up a classic mystery novel struggle between an evil titan and a heroic minority replete with centuries of intrigue and violence, i.e. Luke Skywalker and the Federation. This is all great fun in a novel, but should not be confused with the truth.

Proposing that Jesus was married and had children is just another way of saying he wasn't the one proclaimed by the Christian faith, that he was a man in the flow of history not an intersect between God and history. Tying this idea in with the worship of a female goddess adds mystery and tension to the story and taps into the energy of the modern struggle between the sexes and society's effort to harness the sex drive.

Genuine historians that are anti-Christian don't claim that Rome hijacked the Christian movement, but rather that the Christian movement hijacked Rome. So even though the church was changed by its being adopted as the state religion, and even though its secular power led to terrible corruption, it's first three hundred years laid down the fundamental message. Constantine did not. What he did do was demand that the church settle its message so he could have a coherent religion to authorize.

The story line of this book elevates the divine female as if this were a breath of fresh air in an oppressive male-dominant Christian society. The divine female is nothing more than the ancient worship of sex. It is as commonplace as Hustler magazine. The worship of Venus three thousand years ago is the same impulse that drives the advertising and entertainment industry today. Just as commerce is dependent on sex today, production was linked to procreation then. If you could get the male and female gods to mate (so they reasoned), you could produce human, animal and vegetable crops on the earthly plane, i.e. wealth.

Christianity was born into a male-dominated culture. It didn't create it. The church has deviated from its earliest affirmation of the equality of male and female ("in Christ there is neither male nor female" -- the apostle Paul, 60 AD.) God's voice in the Bible never admits to being male or female. When Moses asks for God's identity, he gets "I am who I am."

The book's experts are fiction and so is their expertise. Solomon's temple, for instance, was destroyed long before Mary Magdalene came along. We know little about it and certainly don't know what its columns looked like. It was the second temple, the one build by Herod the Great that she would have seen. The holy of holies was not under ground but rather stood at the center of temple mount. She couldn't have gotten in it much less under it, dead or alive. The Crusades were a silly business that brought back nothing of historical value except the knowledge of a Muslim culture more advanced than the European culture. The Crusaders were completely ignorant of the land they conquered. The local people neither new nor cared where the bones of Mary Magdalene might be. They did know they could sell the Crusaders anything with the right story. So the knights credulously or greedily brought back relics purported to be fragments of the cross, the hair of John the Baptist and so on. The grail may have had a forged artifact initially or may have just been a story brought back without the souvenir.

My expertise doesn't extend to all the areas the "experts" in the book claim, but if their errors in fact are consistent with the ones I can pick out without research, I presume that it is all fiction and should be taken as such.

It is a fun book that is irrelevant to the serious subjects of Christian faith, sexuality and hope for a better world.

Roland McGregor
7/2003

Rating:
Summary: Keep to the Code
Review: The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown is a magical thriller. Brown pulls you through his well written book by shifting plots frequently. He keeps you wondering, who is the next target, what is going on over there, or when will these situations fall together?
Brown's manner of writing, itself, is enough to claim and hold your interest. The short chapters keep you thinking where he could go next in his amazing story. Robert Langdon, a professor and writer, and Sophie Neveu, a cryptographer, must decipher the codes given to them from the scene of a murder in the Louvre, the famous museum and home to the Mona Lisa.
I recommend this book to anyone who has a few spare days and is in the mood for this fast-paced thriller. You will catch yourself searching for answers to the puzzle in books, on the internet, and from random people or close friends. I really enjoyed Brown's brisk-paced storyline and hope you do the same.

Rating:
Summary: The Da Vinci Code
Review: The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown is an amazing novel. The book begins with Robert Langdon, a Harvard symologist, in his hotel room in Paris. In the middle of the night a detective comes to his hotel room and takes him to the Louvre, where a Louvre curator has been murdered. When Langdon arrives at the Louvre he find the dead mans body and a baffling cipher around the body. Langdon and cryptologist, Sophie Neveu have to decipher the code. Langdon soon finds out that the dead curator was part of the Priory of Sion-a real secret society that included such people as Da Vinci, Sir Isaac Newton, Botticelli, and Victor Hugo. Langdon suspects that they are on a hunt for the most sought after article ever. During a race around Paris, all odds seem against the two. They are also facing against a faceless powerbroker that follows and knows their every move. They must find the article or else the truth and power of it may be lost forever.
I loved the novel The Da Vinci Code. I thought it was an extremely exciting and interesting book that kept me on my toes throughout the book. The beginning of the book might seem boring, but after the first 60 pages or so the book becomes an amazing novel. The twists in the book lead you through it on the edge of your seat. The twists may seem to be big parts of the book that completely change around the whole ideal of the book, but the end shocked me completely. The only thing bad I can write about this book is that it had a slow beginning, besides that the book was truly amazing.
I would strongly recommend reading this book. It is a book that everyone can enjoy and have fun with.

Rating:
Summary: Keeps you on your toes
Review: The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown was one of three books I bought at one time. I am not typically a mystery fan and what I really enjoyed bout Brown's book is that it is not a "typcial" mystery. It's really great. I read it at the same time as I read My Fractured Life by Rikki Lee Travolta and despite being two different genres, there were a lot of similarities. It's a sign of great authors, crossing typical genre barriers. Da Vinci is more than a mystery; Fractured is more than a Hollywood story. I truly enjoyed both because they refused to be cornered into a genre. Both kept me guessing.

Rating:
Summary: Not Your Ordinary Mona Lisa
Review: The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

Have you ever left a movie, limp, exhausted and just wrung out? Were you on the edge of your seat the whole time? The Da Vinci Code left me that way. Everytime I relaxed a little, "Okay, they made it through THAT crisis", up would come another.
Author Dan Brown takes his major characters, symbologist Robert Langdon and cryptologist Sophie Neveu through a harrowing search/journey that leaves you with more information than you probably want to know about art history, symbolism, ancient religions, cults, architecture and much more.
Although the flashbacks are too long, wordy and at times intrusive, the plot, the use of modern technology and the sheer speed of the action make this a book you will find hard to put down.

Rating:
Summary: A fast-paced, plot twisting, murder mystery.
Review: The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

To state the obvious, this book is a great page-turner, full of puzzles, foreshadowing, suspense, mystery, character surprises, humor and even a happy ending. To some, it will disturb the foundation of their faith and others may be launched into a study of the alternative theories of the history of Christianity. Although written as fiction, this author bases his novel on historical religious facts and controversial issues.

Not so obvious is the name the author gives to one of the leading characters, the curator of the Louvre, Jacques Sauniere, unless one has read "The Tomb of God" and "The Hiram Key," both of which are not mentioned in this novel. It may be that the author picked this particular surname because it is tied into those similar religious mysteries found in the other books. Abbe Berenger Sauniere (1852-1917) was the parish priest of the church of St. Mary Magdalene at Rennes-le-Chateau, France where he discovered certain parchments buried in a wall and allegedly turned the Abbe into a very wealthy person. It is also alleged that this was the church where one of the kings of the Merovingians, Dagobert II married Visigoth princess, Gizelle de Razes. Why the connection? It is about the Priory of Sion and Mary Magdalene's connection to this town. For more on that mystery, read the "Tomb of God."

The first name of Jacques is also the historical name of Jacques De Molay. In 1292 he was the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar. In 1307 after the infamous Friday the thirteenth round up of the Knights, he was crucified, but not killed until seven years later. For more on that mystery and the Rosslyn Chapel, read "The Hiram Key."

Brown toys with names, such as Bishop Aringarosa, the character who goes around in circles, perhaps suggesting the song, A ring around the rosie...We all fall down. Further, could it suggest sub-rosa, a ring for the Rosa? Still other names and places point out character traits and connections to the mystery.

From Fibonacci's numbers, Lewis Carroll's mirror code, Da Vinci's work, the Priory of Sion and other religious, controversial issues, this author knows where Newton's apple falls and has come up with this fast paced plot twister and best seller. "How dark the con of Man." ...smiling all the way to the bank.

Jack Mellone 6/29/03