Angels and demons, Dan Brown

[Vorchia]

I read this book over the weekend. It reads like a train, just like the Da Vinci Code did. Its precisely the same style and many elements in it reminded me of it rather strongly. Of course Angels and Demons was written BEFORE the Da Vinci Code...
This time it involves Illuminati and science, not the holy grail.
I was laughing out loud at the anecdote of the Harvard biology professor and the Christian fish with legs in response to a demonstration against genetic manipulation...
It involves antimatter, conveniently stored in cyclinders that have batteries for 24 hours and go kaboom when the battery is gone. Naturally it can't be just plugged into our normal electricty sockets so if it gets stolen (which naturally it does) it needs to be hauled back to CERN (where it was invented) in Switzerland.
Anyhow, the 'Illuminati' steal the antimatter and place it somewhere in the Vatican while at the same time a new pope is being elected.
Brown has a rather amusing but correct summary of what a cardinal needs to be if he wants to have a serious chance at being elected pope: a trinity of the traits conservative, conservative and conservative...

The Dutch translation is called 'The Bernini mystery' by the way.
There, I put another bestseller in the bookforum, happy?

[aric]

vorchia said:

I read this book over the weekend. It reads like a train, just like the Da Vinci Code did. Its precisely the same style and many elements in it reminded me of it rather strongly. Of course Angels and Demons was written BEFORE the Da Vinci Code...

But surely you saw the difference of opening up the book with a gruesome murder then leading into a puzzle-laden chase driven by a secret society...

Oh...

;D

vorchia said:

This time it involves Illuminati and science, not the holy grail.

Yeah. It's interesting to see how the legend of the Illuminati has grown to the proportions that it has. If you actually read a scholarly treatment of the group, you'll see that it was effectively crushed by the Elector of Bavaria.

And in another round of bad history and scholarship on Dan brown's part, he attributed the formation of the Illuminati to Galileo Galilei instead of Adam Weishaupt...

Not that that wouldn't have been cool. The Illuminati as imagined by Brown is a much more interesting (and intelligent) group than the one that actually existed...

And boy, did I hate that camerlengo character. It's a good thing it turned out the way it did, otherwise I might have felt bad about hating the dude! What really got my goat was that idiotic speech he gave in front of the cardinals in the Sistine Chapel. I liked how he boiled it down to atheistic/amoral science verses theism (presumably the Christian version), as if somehow there weren't any other way to control and moderate science.

And another thing, is it just me or does Brown have a hard-on for keeping truth from the public? In the Da Vinci Code, Langdon doesn't reveal the location of Mary Magdalene's body despite the revolution in spiritualism it might have instigated in the world Brown created. Instead he selfishly keeps it to himself. And in A&D, he doesn't tell the world the scam the camerlengo pushed on everybody. Instead he lets the world bask in the glory of ignorance. What is it with him and spirituality based on falsehood? Is it like this in Deception Point too?

All in all, A&D, like The Da Vinci Code, was a fun read but like that book, tends to cop out in the end.

- Aric

[Buttercup]

OK, I am intrigued, now I will have to find money in the budget this coming payday to buy it. Thanks for the preview ya'll. I'll let you know what I think later.