Rating: 
Summary: bad bad bad
Review: I expected this book to be enjoyable light reading, and light reading it was. The iconography was sort of interesting, but could not overcome the implausible plot twists and the completely stupid revelation at the end. Oh yeah, and the protagonists hook up. Who woulda thunk it.
Rating:
Summary: I Feel Cheated
Review: I feel cheated,any amount paid for this is robbery!!!This is the worst book and storyline I've ever read.I tried to finish it but with little or no value in his story I couldn't stomach any more!Some of his ideas border on the insane,others demand you park your brain outside the door.
Save your money don't buy this book.I wish I hadn't.
Rating:
Summary: A triumph of marketing
Review: I feel like the kid in "The Emperor's New Clothes." Remember that tale? An unscrupulous tailor cons a ruler into buying invisible clothes. Everyone's standing around cooing about how great the king looks in his stylish suit. Finally, a child cries out that His Highness is, in fact, naked.In this case, the con artist is Dan Brown. The product he's peddling isn't invisible, it's just bad. The story begins in a deserted museum, where an elderly curator is being stalked by a huge (are you ready for this?) albino. That's right, like in the movie with Chevy Chase and Goldie Hawn. But he isn't your ordinary evil albino. This one also has a mysterious accent! The rest of the chapter reads like that novel Snoopy keeps trying to write, "It was a dark and stormy night... ." The dialogue is painful. The bad guys say things like, "So, my pupil, tell me what I must know," and "When we possess the keystone, we will be only one step away." To paraphrase those guys on Mystery Science Theatre 3000, this is a book that has EVERYTHING -- completely wrong. Plot, character, art, history. If "The Da Vinci Code" were a movie (and Ron Howard has threatened to make it one) it would be a perfect target for Mike Nelson and his robot friends. Weirdly, some major media outlets have lauded the author for the depth of his research. Taste is subjective, but facts aren't. Because of the endorsements Brown has received, a lot of readers will trust the book when it says things like, "Jehovah" comes from a root word that harkens back to goddess worship. Actually, Jehovah is a mistranslation of an ancient Hebrew word that scholars today render as Yahweh, which means "I am that I am." Anyone who took a freshman course on Old Testament literature knows that. But Brown relentlessly mangles such facts in an effort to show that Jews and Christians are stupid, and that the Catholic leadership conspired to suppress the "sacred feminine." He goes on to declare that church doorways and halls are really secret architectural symbols of vaginas. Have you ever been trapped in a conversation with someone who turns everything into a phallus symbol? When you're in Brown's spiritual universe, you can't take a step without bumping your head on various parts of the female genitalia. If you want to read this book, don't waste your money. With 5 million copies out there, it should be easy to borrow one.
Rating:
Summary: Biggest piece of schlock I've ever read
Review: I feel violated having read the Da Vinci Code.
It was not well written, had glaring historical inaccuracies, and predictable plot twists.
The biggest question I have is why did an author attempting to bring attention to the goddess cult make the only female character incredibly stupid? She is blindly influenced by the male characters in an extremely pathetic manner.
Rating: 
Summary: 2 stars average (4 entertainment and 0 plausability...)
Review: I finally felt obliged to read it to know first hand what was the fuss about....
Well, what a pity! (OR SORRY MESS!), if given more careful editing and research (and I do not mean research in the most evident "science", "art", "mystic" or "esoteric" departments) the level of it or if you prefer the continuity in future years of his value as a thriller would have been greatly enhanced...
Let me explain, I think fast sales and quick impact has spoiled the chance of writing a lasting masterpiece of FICTION (nothing against fast bucks for the author etc, surely deserved for hiting the raw spot even if without been subtle...), BUT, and that's a BIG BUT!, there are simply two categories of authors from my humble point of vue:
1) those you want to reread or even better grip you in a way that makes you buy other books (next or previously published by the afore mentioned author);
2) those wich when you finish the book let you with a feeling of dissapointment or unfullfilled expectatives, and worse of all: YOU DECIDE IT'S NOT WORTH TO GIVE A SECOND TRY TO THE AUTHOR... (with me it's the second category I guess...)
In a paralelism with music a prefabricated HIT without real backbone or a ONE HIT ONLY fenomenon...
Now, to be specific, I have read far more interesting thrillers in my life without so many, many, many flaws... The fact the action (?) happens in a suposed very short period of time does not explain the gross inconsistencies of the plot, and I mean the BASIC plot...
In my reviews I do not like to spoil the read diclosing too much of the argument but it's very easy to mention the following points without doing so:
1) Absolutly unbelievable disregard of standart police practice/ procedures (somehow I think french and british police members must be laughing mad with this novel... good for them! they deserve a good laugh from time to time...).
2) Incomprensible naivety about flight/landing procedures post 11 September... (or even before that mind...)
3) Plain stupid references to "exotic" countries like Andorra (where people detained in France DO NOT GO TO SERVE SENTENCES like it was some sort of "Ile de Re" (see Edmundo Dantes plight...yes, the "Count of Montecristo" chap!), as if people sentenced in Canada would go to jail in the USA!...),
Incidently (as an andorran citizen) Andorra is a ONU member state with a Constitution and is an INDEPENDENT NATION (and has not whatsoever penal relation with France or Spain for that matter...) Not that many of you could place Andorra in the map or the globe I am afraid...
4)The way characters DO THINGS in this novel...(how to commit 4 murders of VERY IMPORTANT PEOPLE in a night (or very short span) in Paris by the same killer...without mobilisation of the whole police/press/media etc.), and here I disregard purposefully the peculiar aspect of the poor choiced assasin/guy wich would have made him noticeably in any crowd... (and yes! he had a particular pitifull childhood...)
5)The use of such silly comments/asumptions as: mainly fake security cameras (a high percentage HE SAYS!), fire escaping emergency doors NOT CONNECTED TO ALARM SYSTEM!, security locks or iron bars wich can NOT BE OPENED FULLY AFTER SERVING HIS PURPOSE!... anyone lightly related with building construction-security matters is at this point laughing as hard as the police members mentioned...
6)And finally the jumbled-mixed cocktail of "light" (meaning NO DEEP) well known things, 1,618 "the divine proportion", the Templars, the Grail, Maria Magdalena, Mitras, Yin-Yan, Egyptian Gods, Lost and Found "ancient" contradictory "gospel", Opus Dei, Vatican IVOR, the inevitable english "sir" AND HIS BUTLER!... Gosh! In my time (when I was fourteen and still read science-fiction) I was bored to death by Fulcanelli's "The Cathedrals Mysteries", or the vastly more popular "The Comeback of the Witch/Druid/Magician" it was "El Retorno de los Brujos" in spanish... such nonsense...
I think on the whole it was A MISSED OPORTUNITY, but PLAIN ENTERTAINMENT IN A VERY LIGHT WAY (compared with it Ian Fleming is nearly Shakespeare...).
Good for a long flight, a boring rainy Sunday, and little else.
(Felt a little cheated when I finished it).
Have fun with it anyway if you are going to read it. PS: And this is NOT in defence of any particular religion, sect, organisation, revisionist past (or not), Pope, or whatever... IT'S JUST FOR THE SAKE OF NOVELS&LITERATURE!
Rating: 
Summary: if there is a film version, it will be great entertainment
Review: I finally read THE DA VINCI CODE after hearing so many superlatives about it from friends and coworkers. While it was a really quick read, and very entertaining for a novel, I couldn't say it was a great book. The one complaint or negative is the length of the chapters. They were in general too short, setting you up for the next plot twist, some of which were exciting enough to start another chapter, while some were just average. I am looking forward to the upcoming film of the book. The film could make for great moviewatching--perhaps the author had a movie in mind when he was putting the story together. I have to give the author credit where it's due: I am most interested now in the hidden history of Jesus as the book mentions several real books written about the supposed true life of Christ. I am not a particularly religious person, but the Da Vinci Code has piqued my interest in reading further about man's quest for the Holy Grail. If you pick up the Da Vinci Code, do plan on spending several uninterrupted hours plowing through it rather quickly. Recommended reading even if the ending was abrupt and formulaic.
Rating:
Summary: Falls way too short of the mark
Review: I finally succumbed to the lure of the Da Vinci code, finding the premise an intriguing one and mistakenly thinking that any book that had been on the bestseller list as long as this one has deserved a look. The first half of the book kept me turning the pages, getting swept into the breakneck pace, but the psuedo-intellectual intrigues began wearing thin quickly after that. I'm afraid it just got too much of a stretch that the 'bad guys' were always just half a step behind the 'good guys' no matter how many fantastic escapes they pulled. It felt more like "The Perils of Pauline" written by a theological think tank. A nice try, but there are too many unlikely twists and a plot hole large enough to drive a semi through.
Rating:
Summary: Even though I'm an ex-Buddhist ,
Review: I find Mr. Brown's so-called fact on the birth manner of the Lord Buddha offensive. The Lord Buddha did slide out of his queen mama's hole already invaded with his king papa's pole, and at the same time seven lotuses sprang up to welcome his advent and then function sort of as a carpet for him to walk upon. He didn't come out of a lotus as claimed Mr. Brown's Langdon. Then I give this book one star because I find what has been said by many disenchanted reviewers so true. P.S. Don't get me wrong. I hold nothing against the Lord Buddha, whom I so admire as an absolute philosopher. It's just that establishment which supposedly teaches his teaching.
Rating: 
Summary: Wow!
Review: I find recently hard to find books that are "hard to put down", but The Da Vinci Code was the embodiment of that phrase. This book is a masterpiece!
Rating:
Summary: The Da Vinci Code Sparks Interest in 10 Other Books
Review: I finished reading this last night - 2 1/5 days total reading time, I just couldn't put it down. Now I won't claim that the book is an A+ Thriller/Mystery as I don't read those books and wouldn't be an educated critic - however, it did keep my complete attention at a busy time of the season (holidays) What I notice is that the book generated many questions for me and I am excited to learn more about lost religions. I am looking on Amazon for more titles that will continue me on the journey... What I notice is that many, many others are feeling the same as I - I checked the Amazon 100 Best Seller list moments ago and found the following titles - #5 - Angels & Demons
#8 - The Gospel of Mary Magdalene
#16 = The Gnostic Gospels
#22 - Holy Blood, Holy Grail
#28 - Lost Christianities
#37 - Lost Books of the Bibles
#48 - Beyond Belief - The Secret Gospel of Thomas
#74 - The Secret Teachings of Jesus
#86 - Nag Hammadi Library
#99 - The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls This is the best flattery that a book can get - to spawn the interest into subjects that have been ignored by the mainstream for so long. Proof that there is interest in questioning the status quo. People are finally questioning and questioning is that best one can do to educate oneself. I think this book deserves many awards for the amazing impact it is creating.
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