SuzanneRating:
Review
Encrypted messages, secret religious societies, and a conspiracy surrounding the "real"
life of Jesus, which has been covered up for centuries and is about to be blown wide open, make up the basis of this pulp thriller. Unfortunately, the entire story is so sensationalized that the book reads like one headline after another from The National Enquirer. Brown apparently thinks his readers need to be hit over the head with something really shocking every two or three pages, a method which made my eyeballs roll into the back of my head. It's just way too melodramatic - e.g. the "hulking albino" bad guy is a bit much. This book only serves as another reminder of how twisted and power-hungry religious freaks can be (Catholic ones, in this case).
Worst Line:
It appears early on and sets the tone for the rest of the book: "The sins committed today had been Holy in purpose." Give me a break.
JenniferRating:Review
It is really too bad - this book has excellent historical facts, as Dan Brown is obviously a great historian. Unfortunately, he is a terrible mystery writer, and this book is written in a very formulaic way. If you've ever read a typical mystery novel, you know exactly what I mean. The characters are marginally developed, the "good guys" always escape danger enough to solve the mystery, and the male and female fall in love by the end of the book.
The DaVinci Code is no exception to the formula, and Dan Brown is not terribly skilled at cleverly hiding it. I now know enough to be dangerous about Leonardo DaVinci, Mona Lisa, PHI and the story of the Holy Grail. This book has piqued my interest in these subjects, and I plan on exploring them further. For that, I thank the author. Reading any more of this authors books, though, no thanks.
Best Lines:
"As a tribute to the magic of Venus, the Greeks used her four-year cycle to organize their Olympiads. Nowadays, few people realized that the four-year schedule of modern Olympic Games still followed the cycles of Venus."
