Comment

Aug 01, 2015rswcove rated this title 1 out of 5 stars
Dan Brown is not a subtle author. But that doesn't mean his books will not be enjoyable. I read "The Da Vinci Code" and found it highly entertaining, if absolutely devoid of deeper meaning. It was a good popcorn novel. This was not. I suspect that whichever Dan Brown novel you read first will be your favorite, because The first two Robert Langdon novels are in fact the same novel with locations and character names changed and almost nothing else of substance done to distinguish them. I do suspect though, that had I read "angels and Demons" first, I would not have been as charitable as I was after finishing "The Da Vinci Code". "The Da Vinci Code" is formulaic, but plays the formula well. "Angels and Demons" is badly formulaic and badly written with the writer outright telling the reader "Stay around for this shocking event somewhere in the future" in a way that completely jarred me from the narrative. And again, the similarity between the two novels mean that I knew who the real villain was and you was the red herring based not on the novel itself but on the previous Dan Brown novel I had already finished. I finished this, but mostly out of morbid curiosity. Two Dan Brown novels convinced me that the author thinks his readers are violently stupid and that he will happily exploit that. A machine could have written these novels. Heck, maybe a machine did.