Codex

Rating:
Summary: Petrol, anyone?
Review: This is a difficult book to rate. Entry into the book is odd, but it sweeps the reader away fairly quickly into the main plot of the story (as far as the reader knows), and the book carries the reader along fantastically, until the book all of a sudden accellerates to a breakneck speed, hurrying towards the ending, then running out of fuel and stalling in the last two pages.

An excellent read, but a truly poor ending. Terrible ending. Big gaping hole, with the reader dangling through it, wondering where the floorboards went. Quite a shame, actually, considering how well the book was written.

Oddly enough, there was very little real character development in this book. The strongest character developed was the Codex itself, but the story had enough life to carry the characters along, whether you knew them or not.

I give a halting reccomendation to this book, perhaps avoid the last chapter, and imagine that it has a good ending. 3 stars is the max I can spend on it.

Rating:
Summary: A literary thriller with style and atmosphere
Review: At a loss how to occupy himself during a two-week vacation before his transfer to London, whiz-kid banker Edward Wozny obeys a summons from some eccentric, titled clients - the Duke and Duchess of Bowmry. Although outraged to discover they want him - an acknowledged financial wunderkind - to organize their moldy old books, he finds himself oddly intrigued.

Before he quite knows what he's done, he's agreed to catalog the books - something he knows nothing about, and to look for a 14th century tome by Gervase of Langford, someone he's never heard of.

Before the day is out, Edward takes on another unaccustomed activity - computer gaming. A college friend foists the disk on him and while it's not an activity that has ever appealed, Edward becomes hooked by the unusually vivid graphics, losing swaths of time in the game's strange landscape.

The Langford codex soon becomes the focal point of his daytime world. His search takes him to a rare-book repository where he meets the serious and possibly attractive young medievalist Margaret Napier, whose Langford thesis has bogged down in the tedious obscurity of the man. She reacts frostily to Edward's ignorant query - the book he seeks does not exist. It's an 18th century fabrication, she tells him, " a sensational and occasionally salacious allegorical journey culminating in a mystical vision of the end of the world."

Nevertheless, she succumbs to the lure of the search, which becomes increasingly convoluted, romantic, mysterious and threatening as they delve deeper into the arcane world of books and intrigue. In his spare moments, Edward plunges into the computer game. The apocalyptic world it - or he - is creating begins to bear some startling resemblance to his real world activities and strangely echoes the codex he seeks.

Grossman's witty, atmospheric prose draws the reader into a vivid surreal world, in which it's possible to believe that ambitious young bankers lose themselves in ancient texts and seductive computer games, and old books can reach through centuries to affect the fortunes of modern dynasties. The finely tuned characters have elusive depths and the booklore, fascinating in itself, fits seamlessly into the plot. Grossman, book critic for "Time" magazine, delivers a literary thriller to stand with the best.

Rating:
Summary: A Bibliomaniac's Delight!
Review: Lev Grossman's novel has done for the manuscript what John Dunning's works have done for rare books. It is a non-stop delight on many levels - see how many. I only wonder if the author is a total cynic or indifferenly realistic or ? Perhaps his next novel (hopefully out soon) will give me the answer. :)

Rating:
Summary: Codex
Review: This is an amazingly complex book that interweaves different kinds of realities into the main character's life: the narratives of books, video games, dreams, and even a painting. It plays with time expanding and contracting from the time of Chaucer to the future. It is a marvellous page-turner.

Rating:
Summary: Strangly unsatisfying ending
Review: Up until the last chapter, I was completely drawn into the world of Edward, but the ending left way too many unanswered questions for me to give it 5 stars.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Read!
Review: Codex is fast moving and well plotted with a sub-plot I have never encountered before on video gaming. Very cool! The rare book milieu is full of arcane details and facts. It is a world seldom seen and worth entering. A good read. I totally enjoyed it.

Rating:
Summary: Intelligent, Gripping, and Entertaining
Review: I have been searching for an acceptable follow-up to the DaVinci Code, and I found that Codex surpassed it. Codex is written with both a wry sense of humor and an indepth historical knowledge of books that provide for a unique, daring story. Lev Grossman deftly propels you through the protagonist's intellectual twist and turns, taking the reader along on a complicated but thoroughly enjoyable journey. It was a fabulous read for those that like some spark and originality with their mysteries.

Rating:
Summary: Another empty promise
Review: Wasted my money. Impractical and improbable story. Thinly - almost transparent character development. People predictable and situations - like the rescue in the jungle by an english speaking native who turns out to be another blood brother - so unbelievable to be laughable. Fit only for 7th or 8th grade readers(...).

Rating:
Summary: codex
Review: The book has a great plot and is well researched and written.

Rating:
Summary: Very Dissapointing
Review: I picked up Codex hoping to be swept away into a world of medieval literature and computer games populated with deep, interesting characters and twisting plotline. And as I read through the whole thing on the plane, despite the fact that I found the beginning to be slow, I thought I was enjoying the book. But then poor Lev decided to give me an out-of-the-blue ending which poorly wrapped up the story, and he unintentionally caused me to actually think about the book I had just read.

Thinking is bad when you read a book like Codex.

You first attempt to interpret the ending, try your hardest to believe that it actually was a good one. You think about Edward, Margaret, the Duchess, and then you realize that not only was the ending poor, but the characters are grossly under-developed. They're all steroetypical people: the nerd, the academic, etc. They have no more depth than Charles Darnay had in A Tale of Two Cities. Every single one of them is bland and predictable, and although the book managed to fool you into thinking otherwise while you were reading, once you put it down they all lose their sparkle and all of the plot holes become readily apparent.

Please don't buy this book, you will be much better off re-reading The Da Vinci Code if you're looking for this type of book (or you could go for Angels and Demons, another book by Dan Brown). They book will hold you as you read it, but when you finish you won't be feeling satified, just empty and dissapointed.