Angels & Demons

Entertaining, but bad.

Dan Brown is not a good writer, but his books are entertaining. The plot is exciting if you can get past how frequently Brown uses Deus ex machina to get Langdon out of a tight spot. Vittoria is horribly written, as are all the women in Dan Brown's books, existing primarily as an object for Langdon to ogle.

Despite all the negatives, the book is an entertaining read, and I intend to read more of Robert Langdon's adventures in the future.

A fun reading, quite entertaining. The ending is full of twists and turns, but it seems to me to be in a hurry given the information to be revealed.

I've never called Vatican City and Rome so much, but I confess that I felt like visiting the places mentioned in the book.

I prefer the Langdon presented in the Da Vinci Code. In this book he seems to me more naive and whose deeds do not interfere so much in the narrative.

I think I enjoyed this more than [b:The Da Vinci Code 269831 The Da Vinci Code Dan Brown http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/517GH6476YL.SL75.jpg 2982101]. As with the Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown masterfully wove a tale of fiction regarding the Catholic Church and an ancient secret order, intertwining the fiction with bits and pieces of facts. I liked this one more because I found it had much better suspense. The starting hundred or so pages were a bit slow, but the pace picked up from there and went all the way to the end. There were also a stronger element of violence and sexual imagery in this book compared to the Da Vinci Code, but they were opportunely used to convey the proper reaction from the reader or to better depict a character. I read the book after the movie so I had the luxury of seeing what the movie altered from the book but it did cause me to lose out on the ending (a bit, not much, given how much the movie altered it). On the whole, a very entertaining read.

Ugh. Embarrassing!

But I was really stressed out all week, and realized that this schlocky gem was sitting on my bookshelf, as yet unread (I bought it just before a transatlantic flight, paranoid that my half-finished reading material would be finished too quickly). And Dan Brown is nothing if not a frothy distraction.

You know, the usual: nice art historical detail, questionable nonsense about science, a hackneyed and vaguely misogynistic love story, and a whole boatload of suspense that kept me reading despite the other shit.

Although the book was amazing, a few points should be clarified :
1) The name of the Arabic cult - which is actually not arabic - is Hashashin and not hassassin, (meaning people who do drugs) but it is an innocent mistake. What is more disturbing is the fact that it was PERSIAN and not Arabic. The Hashashins spoke PERSIAN and not Arabic even if the translation of the arabic words in the book was accurate.
The Hashashins group was led by Hassan el Sabbah, in the 11th century (that part was correct in the book), who was an ATHEIST who claimed PROPHECY (So the info in the book was incorrect concerning two points). In the end, Hassan el Sabbah was stopped by another atheist scientist. In fact, Hassan el Sabbah was himself a scientist before claiming prophecy.
It is actually a wonderful story about how he pretended prophecy but I am too lazy to type it down.
2) And this is a personal opinion. The existence of Antimatter cannot prove the existence of God. As a matter of fact it proves his non existence. Matter coming to existence by itself can prove to all religious people that the universe CAN come from nothing. But this is a personal opinion and therefore subjective. Anyone reading this review can disapprove with my opinion, and I wouldn't mind in the very least. In fact, I won't even target them, or argue with them.

4.5 STARS
THE ONLY REASON THIS DOESN'T HAVE FIVE STARS IS BECAUSE IT TOOK ME ONE THIRD OF THE BOOK TO GET INTO IT, WHICH IS SOMEWHERE AROUND 200 FUCKING PAGES.
This book was awesome. That is the best way I can say it, truly.
It really helped that there was a small (and I mean VERY small, like TINY tiny) love-line going through, because I have a lot of trouble reading books without them, I just want that relationship, you know?
Also, getting to see from the killer's POV was FANTASTIC, and in the beginning I had an inkling about who the killer was because I thought I remembered something from the movie (which I saw like at least four years ago), but throughout the book, found my theory to be completely wrong (so then I had the theory that they changed the killer for the movie) and then I got to the end and then found out that I was actually RIGHT (Unless, they actually DID change the killer in the movie, in which all of this doesn't make sense at all).
I would like to thank my dad for owning this book. In English. (Or I wouldn't have read it.)

4.5/5

I really enjoyed this and practically flew through the whole thing in 3 days. But I did find at some points the writing wasn't as great as I'd wanted it to be and I had seen the plot twist from pretty early on in the book.

I would definitely recommend this to anyone looking for a thrilling read with conspiracy themes.

Not one to typically read a mystery crime novel, but I enjoyed this one. The use of religious symbology captivated me. My biggest issue is realising half way through that a lot of the references were fabricated, or “creatively” altered. It didn't ruin the story as a work of fiction, but I can't say it didn't take some of the wonder out of it. Of course, there are aspects that are true, and I did learn a few things. If you're someone interested in the history of Rome, the Catholic Church and the Illuminati, you will have to put the book down to do some fact checking before you go repeating cool “facts” you've learnt. But don't let that wreck the book for you, it still stands up well.

Lots of twists and clever ideas

Despite being late to the party, I thoroughly enjoyed the first in the Robert Langdon series. It has set Dan Brown up as ana author who really knows how to pull my intrigue. There was definitely a lot of action, a lot of mysteries and it was all written in a way that made it very accessible!

Looking forward to reading the sequel, one of the bestselling books of all time, The Da Vinci Code.

Me ha gustado bastante, hubo un momento que me atrapó y me comí más de 150 páginas antes de dormir
Lo único que peleo es el término “por el bien del guión” que tuvo un par de veces y que me sacaban un poco de la “realidad” que se puede tener en la historia, cosa que no me hace perder el disfrute de la historia al final.

Nota: me sorprende que algunos comentarios sean malos porque sienten insultada a la religión, es ficción.

Slechtste boek ooit gelezen! De schrijver onderschat zijn lezers door alle ontdekkingen die Langdon doet ‘briljant' te noemen. Langdon zelf is een onsympathiek persoon en zijn hele obsessie met Vittoria verveelde me. Het enige ‘ohooo' momentje was het feit dat de paus een zoon heeft dmv kunstmatige inseminatie, leuk gevonden. Het is dat ik dit boek als studiemateriaal moest lezen, anders had ik hem niet kunnen uitlezen.