Rating: 
Summary: First Time Dan Brown Reader
Review: This is a truly intriguing book. Hard to put down. But...it gets a little bogged down in Disney (?). I have always believed the Church was hiding a great deal when it came to women. Now I know they have.
Rating: 
Summary: Light Entertainment
Review: This is a very enjoyable read for an airplane trip or rainy vacation day. A deranged albino monk, a secret society, a new theory of the life of Christ, and secret codes all make for an enjoyable fiction ride. This isn't a serious literary work, but for it's genre, this book is everything I expect from light entertainment with a twist.
Rating:
Summary: very entertaining but still light reading
Review: This is a very entertaining book, especially to someone like myself who enjoys both conspiracy theories and theological theories. I was pleasantly surprised that it is light reading and very easy to follow - as some reviews have said it is set up like a book that will soon be made into a big Hollywood production. Personally, I think it's great because sometimes we just need a book with some intriguing thrills to take our mind off life and not challenge our brain (we have textbooks and Scientific American for that sort of thing!)I don't think anyone should take it seriously as far as theological history goes though. It is fiction and there is a mish-mash of different historical ideas that touch upon real theories I've read about, but are manipulated to benefit the fictional story and I would imagine were in no way meant to be considered truths. I also think that it was a little tasteless to use the name of a real Catholic organization in the plot, if I had been the author or editor I personally would have changed the name to a fictional one. Unless of course they were hoping for some controversy to help marketing - which wouldn't surprise me.
Rating:
Summary: I AM ENJOYING THE CDS!
Review: THis is a very good audiobook--i listen to it as i do things around my home. however, it has become so interesting as it progresses, that if i am in another room, i have my ear plugged very tightly to the sound and if something happens, i have to run back in to hear it--doesn't help when trying to get housework done! but who cares! i love the french accents and language--i love the ideas about some of the real truths about the catholic church and da vinci's ability to see that and have what seems to be a strong sense of self so that he allows himself to be a prankster and does not allow the church to oppress him as he SEEMINGLY does not in the book. growing up catholic, it is refreshing to see hear this. Plus i love when people stick their neck out not just for the sake of it, but because they see the truth in things, are brave and speak out when others won't. and, they may do it ALONE! i love hearing the history, the art information, the religious information--knowledge is freedom--this book has freed me in many ways--not because i buy 100% that everything written in this book is FACT, but because it gives me the framework to realize that many fears, suspicions and beliefs that i hold right now about people, ideas, things,etc., are simply cobwebs and i can clean them out right now...
Rating:
Summary: All you "intellectuals" need to lighten up
Review: This is a very good book. Period. I noticed a lot of "smart" people complaining about inaccuracies in the grammer and historical elements of this book. Hey, THIS IS A FICTIONAL NOVEL. And a good one. It's well written and very entertaining. Are some elements kind of stretch? Yes. Do they detract from the story? On the contrary. This should be on your read list unless you're too obstinate to overlook the fiction portions of the book. Having said all that, I will say that I did not enjoy this book as much as Angels & Demons for 2 primary reasons. 1) the characters in this novel are too similar to those in A&D. 2) there are times in this novel where Mr. Brown seems to think that his characters need to stop using their brains long enough to let the ready "solve" a problem or "crack" a code. The main characters seemed to have the hardest time solving the easiest problems. He writes these instinces off by insinuating that they are trying too hard or looking too deep, but it comes off like a blatant attempt to allow us, the readers, to show how brilliant we are by solving something before the characters do. Regardless, this is a great novel....just not quite a great as Angels & Demons.
Rating: 
Summary: Fact or fiction?
Review: This is a very interesting book, but dangerous for people who are not very well read in real history. I would advise people who read this book to remember this is fiction and purely fiction. I have read some reviewers who talk of the contents of this book as "fact". It is purely the imagination of Dan Brown. As interesting as and clever as the book is , the premise behind the whole thing ( which i won't give away) ruined the experience for me. I am glad I read the book so I know what it really is about and where the author wants me to go. I just feel sorry that so many people think it is so great and are so quick to accept the version of history proposed by the book. I can only recommend this book for people who are well learned in history and who take the book for what it is, a suspenseful and clever piece of fiction, and not a true history . When reading this book the reader would be well advised to know the difference between fact and fiction. One final bone to pick with the author: Why pick Opus Dei? I mean, why pick on them?
Rating:
Summary: Loved it, but something stuck in my mind.
Review: This is a very interesting, gripping and riveting novel. I'm sure that you don't want to leave it when you start to read once. I liked it very much, with just one objection. Please don't read any further if you have not read the book yet!
******* Warning!.. Spoilers hereafter!.. *******
Please try to remember the moment Remy drinks the cognac given him by The Teacher, or better, open the book and turn the pages up to Chapter 94 and look for the following paragraph (I have the Turkish print of the novel and the following is my own translation to English, so it surely will differ from the original. But I hope that it would give you an idea of where to look):
"The Teacher stepped to the back door of the limousine and thought 'we have just one problem left here to solve. The police will have no idea of what happened... and there will be no witnesses alive to tell them the truth.' He then opened the door, looking around quickly just to be sure no one's watching, and got in the car."
I, for myself, had some idea of who the Teacher might be, and had a guess up to that point. (I'm sure, that all readers did the same, and all of you smiled and said yourself "I already guessed that!" when the secret about the Teacher's identity revealed some chapters later.)
But after I read the aforementioned paragraph, I thought that I was wrong with my first guess, considering that "an author may hide the truth from readers for sometime, but he/she should never try to deceive/fool/mislead them".
As I said, thought that I was wrong. Because we know there is only Sir Leigh Teabing tied in the back seat, no one or nothing else there; and if the Teacher and Teabing were the same person as I guessed before, the Teacher's action of stepping to the back door and his thinking of 'just one problem left here to solve' would be purposeless and nonsense. That means the Teacher should be someone else, and he 'stepped to the back door' to finish Teabing off who was 'the last problem left'.
In fact, as we would realize chapters later, Teabing *is* the Teacher, and this paragraph seemed as if it was written to mislead the readers in their guesses intentionally. Do you think that an author should have such a right ?
Finally, i'd like to rephrase my point, just for the sake of emphasizing it : I was really surprised when the mystery about the Teacher was uncovered, so I returned to the Chapter 94, re-read the aforementioned paragraph, and thought like this : 'Teabing is the Teacher and he's outside the car now. That means there isn't anybody in the back seat of the car anymore. So why exactly does he step to the back door thinking 'we have just one problem left here to solve.' and
get in the back of the car ? Does it make any sense to you ? What do you think the author's intention is with this paragraph ?
Any thoughts ?
Rating:
Summary: I fail to see the attraction
Review: This is a very pedestrian action caper, written on about the college freshman level. Parts of it are so badly written, with such laughable dialogue, that I turned my head and winced. To its credit it's (mercifully) very quickly paced with a reasonably amusing little treasure hunt and some fun puzzles. But that's it. Plus we're asked to be nostalgic for pre-Christian paganism, which (from everything we know) was an absolutely horrible point in human civilization. (Human sacrifice, anyone?) All that rot about The Goddess, as though this was a period in history we would wish to return to, if only we had our heads screwed on straight, and hadn't been lied to by the Catholic Church. What nonsense. I would like to do a word search and see how many times the phrase "sacred feminine" appears in this book, but it must be at least 100. Once the puzzles were figured out, I just wanted the characters to go away, and couldn't care less if they all went to prison, won the lottery, or fell off a cliff. If you set the bar pretty low, you might enjoy this, but I'll not read anything else he's done. I could write better than this when I was in High School.
Rating:
Summary: What's all the fuss about?
Review: This is a very well written mystery which contains all the aspects of current conspiracy and murder on the stage of the most ancient mystery. 'The Last Temptation of Christ,' 'The Last Supper,' 'King of Kings' notwithstanding, Dan Brown is really on safe ground here. I mean, we can't even puzzle out the shot from the grassy knoll fifty years ago. How could we possibly unravel clues lost for two thousand years in the sands of antiqity over Christ's human life? Mr. Brown presents a murder in the Louvre that takes the characters across three continents to a violent conclusion, with nothing really lost or gained. If we thought we would know more at the end then we knew at the beginning, we are happily, I suppose, disappointed. Mr. Brown through Robert Langdon conjures up a remarkable story, but those critical of the church and those supportive of the church fail to uncover any more grist for their mills. And that's the beauty of Brown's writing. He takes a story we all heard at varying points of our adolescence, presents it beautifully, and keeps our attention throughout. It really is, forgetting the topic, a very compelling story. Worth the effort. Larry Scantlebury
Rating:
Summary: Know What To Expect
Review: This is a wonderful plot, and a step up from Dan Brown's previous works. Although he keeps the same storyline -- Robert Langdon gets a call in the middle night, is drawn in to solve a grizzly murder with the help of a beautiful and smart woman -- this plot is rich in its historical facts and details, alluding to theology, art history, and symbology. The only drawback (pardon me for being so critical) is that Brown's writing style reminds me of books recommended for 9th grade readers. It is a simple style he uses, and his characters necessarily take on a 2-dimensional nature. The richness of the plot carries the day, however, and the simple and "young" writing tyle proves little more than a distraction.
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