I didn't know what to expect-- I loved the DaVinci Code for what it was-- a page turner of a thriller-- and yet this book is on the top of the "worst" reads list for GR...

I thought it was a good read-- definitely kept me turning the pages-- but I agree it's weak in some areas (definitely had to suspend my sense of disbelief on more than one occasion) and it isn't as strongly written as it could be. However, I don't expect a fun read to be the strongest written book ever-- I expect to enjoy the book and have fun guessing the ending-- and this book delivered... I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know the Robert Langdon before The DaVinci Code.

Angels and Demons by Dan Brown was one of the best page-turners I have ever read. From the very beginning I couldn’t put it down. I did not know where Dan Brown would take the story next. Following the main character Robert Langdon, a Harvard symbologist on his first great adventure was breathtaking. I wanted to learn more, to know the secrets of the Illuminati and the only way to do it was to let the story naturally unfold as I read. I can usually guess what is going to happen in thrillers, but Dan Brown did a wonderful job keeping everything a mystery until absolutely necessary to reveal the secrets.
I first read the book on a flight from Seattle to Rome, with a few places in between. Never having read the Da Vinci Code before hand I didn’t have as high of expectations as most people do when going to read Angels and Demons. I have often heard that the Da Vinci Code is much better than Angels and Demons but I disagree. Angels and Demons is Dan Brown at his best. I love how he took historical events, places, art and turned them upside down into a thriller that left me wanting more.
Dan Brown not only wrote a good novel but he also brought up the old argument of Science vs. Religion. Both sides of the argument are thoughtfully brought up in Angels and Demons and in the end it is up to the reader to decide which side they believe is the right path for them. I love that he didn’t try and persuade the reader of his view on the subject but instead put the evidence and arguments out there for us to make up our own minds.
Having traveled to Rome and seeing the places talked about in the novel Dan Brown did a wonderful job putting the readers in the places talked about. As I walked the path of Robert Langdon it seemed even more real to me that events as radical as the illuminati pulled off in the book could have actually happened, giving more power to the fast paced adventure.

This was an interesting read that makes you ask yourself so many questions. I am not one to comment on religion or anything so no worries, there will be no rants! I have not seen the movie based on this book yet but seen it is free on demand so will probably check it out tonight or tomorrow. I will continue the series, but I believe I have read a couple of these books already awhile back but now want to read in order.

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1182548.html

You are the Director of CERN, and one of your senior colleagues is killed in his room with a peculiar word branded on his chest. Do you:
1) inform the authorities
2) google the word branded on the dead man's chest and then phone the first Harvard professor whose name appears in the search results
3) have a nice cup of tea?

You are the head of the Swiss Guard, responsible for the security of the Vatican during the conclave which will elect the next Pope. You receive reliable information that an explosive of unimaginable power has been hidden somewhere in the Vatican and will detonate in a few hours. Incidentally, four senior cardinals have also disappeared. Do you:
1) evacuate everyone, including the cardinals and most of the population of Rome
2) lock the cardinals into the Sistine Chapel and hope that the explosive device will be found by the Harvard professor and the cute physicist who have just turned up
3) have a nice cup of tea?

What was the fate of Copernicus?
1) executed by the church for heresy
2) died in his bed after a lifetime as a priest and senior government official in a church-run statelet
3) he had a nice cup of tea

How likely is it that a Catholic priest would be allowed to adopt a daughter?
1) if they are both interested in physics and she looks good in shorts, I can't see why anyone would find it unusual
2) you must be joking
3) perhaps they could have a nice cup of tea together

Was Winston Churchill a Catholic? Are only cardinals eligible to be elected Pope by ballot?
1) Boring technicalities!
2) A poor excuse for research
3) I've put the kettle on

Who do you trust most for good information on the historical relationship between religion and science?
1) Dan Brown
2) Richard Dawkins
3) Stephen Jay Gould

Really enjoyed this book so much, very binge able and couldn't put it down.

Looking forward to continuing the series.

Angels and Demons is so far one of the best thriller book book I have ever read!
The combination of religion, science, secret brotherhoods and is what makes me a Brown fan.
This is so far the best book I've read for Dan Brown.

n  "Faith is universal. Our specific methods for understanding it are arbitrary. Some of us pray to Jesus, some of us go to Mecca, some of us study subatomic particles. In the end, we all are just searching for truth, that which is greater for ourselves."n

Angels and Demons is one of the most insidiously-constructed page turners I’ve ever read and unlike other such efforts (Richard Laymon’s IN THE DARK) I actually raced to the end of it rather than throwing the thing half-finished against the wardrobe in rage. Think of Hercules Poirrot. Think of Inspector Morse. Think of Agatha Christie. Once you strip all the character and soul from these genre writers you have Dan Brown. They all have in common the one writer trick, etirwer (the backwards rewrite). I don’t mean check a book for spelling and grammar. I mean write a basic plot line. Then go back. Adding in detail that will drive the narrative relentlessly towards what you sketched. Stuffing the book with glimpses of false trails and dead ends to keep the reader in the dark, so to speak. Confounding the reader in a way that will make him feel insignificant and meaningless.

This, for me, is the worst of all genre writing tricks.

Professor of Symbology Robert Langdon in his tweed and nuclear physicist Vittaria Vetra in her Lara Croft gear go in search of the thieves who killed Vittaria’s dad and stole the anti-matter from CERN and find themselves in what appears to be a travelogue of the more obscure bits of Vatican City. It reads just like that, a Treasure Hunt type of book. The reader is dragged along with teasing glimpses of THE TRUTH behind the religion and the war with science that has waged through the ages. But it could have all taken place in a virtual world like the internet or a library with mischievous librarians swapping cards around so old ladies can no longer find their Mills and Boons.

Any good book should involve, include, confront or enrage the reader – this book cored out the reader’s personality so that by the end you didn’t care if there were 30 more pages yet to go as the final threads of the convoluted narrative finally unravelled.

This book (maybe all Dan Brown books) should come with a mental health warning: At no point in the reading of this book was the reader in danger of thinking.

An ultimately vacuous exercise in Franchise Management D.B. even sneaked in an early reference to the following Professor Langdon mystery The DaVinci Code. Enough already!

n  "Listen carefully. I'm about to change your life."n

Not really

So I honestly want to give the book three stars. What I enjoy about Brown is how he can write almost 600 pages of a book and I get almost to the end and realize that it has taken place all in the space of one day. As a writer, I would love to be able to do that. The weaving of religious and scientific themes into an adventure set in European locales is also right up my alley.

What I don't like... and why I am forced to drop down to two stars (just a few examples):

That same time stretching often results in a parceling of time that is terribly irritating - most of the book actually isn't just in less than one day but in about four to five hours. Unfortunately, in one part of the book, given twenty minutes, the protagonists can, say, drink tea and eat scones, talk at length about their theories about what's happening, run from one location to another, save someone, and research an important historical fact. But during another twenty minutes, they don't seem to have enough time to, say, run the length of a block and enter a building. It must be difficult as an author to keep track of this sort of incongruity but this is Brown's special trick and it's irritating that he can't follow his own rules. It needs to be either one way or the other but not both.

Every few chapters, he seems to feel the need to reintroduce his main protagonist by first and last name, "Robert Langdon stood in front of the church..."; like we haven't met this character yet for every single paragraph for the last 126 chapters (and no, I'm not exaggerating on the numbers of chapters).

This really, really frustrating thing where the protagonist, Langdon, is this brainy professor that can supposedly figure out these relatively obscure, secret messages hidden by other brainy men hundreds of years ago in order to save the world... and yet he can't figure out the REALLY obvious things right in front of his face. I was listening to this on audiobook and I SWEAR, I kept expecting a three year old child to pipe up from somewhere in the back of the crowd, saying, "Oh, come on, mister! You can't see that? Seriously? Aren't you supposed to be the hero? Even I can see that!!

And, finally, lines like, "The silence that followed might as well have been thunder." Um, what... honestly, what? Is this Brown's version of "A thunderous silence followed..."?

It's really rather frustrating because I honestly think that in many ways Brown is rather talented; in some of his plotting, the details, the ideas he pulls together. I just wish that in other ways - the writing, some characterization, he could catch up with his other abilities.

After reading The Da Vinci Code, I was going to read both this and Digital Fortress but I do believe I will stop here... wishing I could tip it over to the three stars.

Existe una corriente que critica lo "comercial" y en cierto modo me gustaría sentirme así (siendo poseedor de un paladar literario más refinado), pero la verdad es que cuando leí esta novela hace mas de quince años disfruté muchísimo.

Lo que más me gusta de un libro es que la historia me atrape y que sucedan muchas cosas (ritmo). Ángeles y demonios no solo cumplió con estas características sino que además sacó una gran nota.

¡Ahí tienes mis cinco, Dan!

داستان کتاب شیاطین و فرشتگان از جایی شروع میشه که رابرت لنگدان استاد سمبل شناس دانشگاه با یک تماس عجیب به ژنو در واقع دعوت میشه تا در ماجرای قتل یک دانشمند به یک موسسه‌ی علمی کمک کنه. دانشمندی که با نشانی عجیب در سینه به قتل رسیده. اگر به دید یک داستان بهش نگاه کنید داستان مهیج و جذابی داره، یه سری اطلاعات تاریخی جالب هم بهتون میده ولی خب نگاه علمی یا مذهبی به کتاب باعث گارد گرفتن مقابلش خواهد شد.ه

This book almost ruined my education.
Seriously, whilst I was supposed to be doing homework, I spent three hours reading this.
When I was supposed to be studying for a maths test, I read this.
During science, english, Religion, Drama and Humanities lessons...I read this.
It was that amazing.
For the past week, I have not been asleep before 1AM, because I have been reading this thriller.
And well after I turn of the light in the early hours of the morning, Angels And Demons clouds my thoughts.
One word to describe this book is unputdownable.
Because it really is.

I finished this book on the way home from school today.
And I was walking home.
What a sorry sight I must have been, school bag on back, in full uniform, walk 1.5 kilometers form school to home, and not even looking up from the pages once.
I finished with about 100 meters left to walk.

I loved The Da Vinci Code , but Angels & Demons was way better.
It was smart, thrilling, mysterious, adventurous, scary, intense,....and Unputdownable.
The only reason it did not receive full marks from me, is because the majority of the first 130 pages, at the CERN labs. All that science talk, particle theory and antimatter flew right over my head. Unfortunately, that made the book in-eligible for full marks.

And the Twists!.
Oh my, the twists and turns in this book blew me away. Just when you think you know where the story is headed, something happens and the whole plot is thrown into organized chaos.
As did the action scenes.
And the mystery.
And the writing style.
Yeah....pretty much everything was exceptional.

I espcially liked the realisim.
The real life locations, the Illuminati, CERN....All based upon fact.

Dan Brown, I tip my hat to you.
You have penned a fantastic read.