ANGELS & DEMONS (ROBERT LANGDON, NO 1) (Paperback)

This book starts out alot slower than the DVC but once it gets going you're hooked as Robert Langdon races round Rome trying to find an (H)assassin before it's too late, the details and ambigrams in this book really did surprise me and I was once again sucked into the fantastic world of Dan Brown, his writing is truly refreshing (although his plots sometimes leave alot to be desired). While you could cast the niggling doubts you had about the plot in the DVC aside - due to the fact that it might just be possible - Angels & Demons pushes the reader too far in terms of what they can regard as plausible.

I'll try not to give too much away but falling 3 Miles into foaming water (no matter how much Dan wants you to believe that it's three times softer than standing water) especially when this water isn't an ocean (relatively shallow) you just really wonder whether Mr Brown wrote himself into a corner that he can only get out of by coming up with something incredibly dubious and highly unbelievable which totally spoils the book - unless you can read this part and then pretend it never happened :)

Despite my dislike at how the book arrives at its otherwise excellent conclusion (including a truly unexpected twist) I enjoyed Angels & Demons. Dan Brown really does research his books well and even if you don't subscribe to his views you still have to admire the detail he goes into in his book, the ambigrams alone are worth picking this book up for as i'd never seen one until i read Angels & Demons!

Recommended although it's a long way off the DVC.

Which book is better? My initial reaction would be that I liked "The Da Vinci Code" a bit more because so many of the clues were written out. When Langdon has to look over paintings, statues and other visual clues I find myself wishing Brown had supplied photographs in his book so that I could play along looking for clues (he does provide most of the requisite images at his website, but I did not know this until after the fact and I suspect most readers will not want to stop and go online to call up the photographs). Not that I had much success in my endeavors, but I did know that Leonardo Da Vinci wrote in his journals backwards so that I was ahead of Langdon for a half a page at one point. "Angles & Demons" is played out on a larger and more public stage than "The Da Vinci Code," and when you get to the conclusion of this novel you might find it a bit much, but that is one of the reasons they call it fiction.

The biggest question in the debate over these books seems to be whether Brown is attacking the Catholic Church in his novels, which strikes me a bit odd after reading "Angels & Demons" since the Vatican is the target this time around. This novel is more about the long struggle between science and religion than anything else, and the position Brown takes seems to be that the two are ultimately compatible. I did my dissertation on the Scopes "Monkey" Trial of 1925 and in the spectacle of Clarence Darrow cross-examining William Jennings Bryan that is codified by the fictional "Inherit the Wind," history has forgotten that the original position of the Scopes defense was that there Genesis and evolution were compatible. Consequently, I have a lot of sympathy for Brown's position and I think a careful reading of the text offers as strong a critique of science as it does of religion. Certainly that ideal is represented by the man who is murdered to start off the story and whatever faults in the history and theology of the Catholic Church might be discussed, there are just too many men of devout faith in the narrative to support the idea Brown is out to get the Church.

Nor do I have any real concerns with the extent to which Brown is playing with historical "facts." The whole idea here is to create a sense that the pieces of the puzzle fit together. I do not think for a second that these novels are true; all I need is to believe that they are plausible, so telling me that some statue's finger is pointed in the wrong direction if you go to Rome and see it for yourself is not going to matter to me because I understand how far the rules of the game apply to the real world. Even so, I think that Brown's factual foundation is more substantial than we will usually find under such circumstances, which would end up being a plus rather than a minus. Besides, I like all of the flashbacks to Langdon's discussions with his students (more classroom scenes in the future, please).

Solving the puzzles is the key enjoyment of these novels and that part of the creative process makes up for Brown's tendency to overplay his red herrings and to hide his true villains in plain sight. Ultimately the game matters more than the characters or the plot. As soon as you know that there will be four more murders you realize that at least three of them have to happen because the game has to be played out to the end, so it is not until the frantic end game that your attention really perks up and it is at that point that Brown starts unloading a whole lot of really big surprises on his characters and his readers. In the final analysis the point here is neither history nor theology, but to tell an exciting adventure yarn where the hero gets by mainly on his intelligence rather than good looks and/or weaponry. This is a hero I can actually identify with for once and that is fine with me too.