King Rat (gkr) wrote,
King Rat
gkr

Angels and Demons, Dan Brown

Angels & Demons ambigramSomething like 3 different people recommended this book to me. Sorry folks, but Angels and Demons, Dan Brown's thriller novel that precedes the currently popular The DaVinci Code, requires zillions of pounds of disbelief suspension. If you measured it in pounds that is.

Robert Langdon is a Harvard symbologist. He's hired by the head of C.E.R.N. to help investigate the murder of one of their scientists. He was branded with an Illuminati ambigram, and his death touches off their reappearance and threat to the Vatican City. I won't reveal more about the plot for those who do get into these kinds of stories.

My problems with the story? About 400 levels of coincidence. 16 levels of traitors and moles. Miraculous feats that simply couldn't happen. Plots so complex that no one could pull them off. And obviousness. I detest a story that points out the bad guy too soon. In this case, I think Dan Brown thought he had hidden it well with all sorts of feints and false leads. I had the bad guy pegged right from his introduction simply because there were no omens pointing to his treason. For about 5 or 6 other people, Brown practically screamed This is the bad guy! every time they appeared. He was too obviously pointing at them for that to be the truth. Not with all the other twists and turns. The whole books is based on hidden meanings. Therefore the obvious ones weren't it.

Anyway, it's 569 pages of easy reading fluff if you do like this sort of thing. Just not my cup of tea.

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