Book: Angels & Demons by Dan Brown


A thriller up the same alley as The Da Vinci Code

Dan Brown
Angels & Demons
Pocket Books, 2001
ISBN: 0-671-02736-0
$7.99
572 pages

Angels & Demons is a thriller and a page-turner very much up the same alley as the author's book The Da Vinci Code. Mr Brown wrote Angels & Demons before The Da Vinci Code and it's possibly not quite as much fun, but if you liked one, you'll like the other.

This time, it seems that a secret society called the Illuminati, founded by scientists and persecuted by the Catholic church long ago, isn't extinct. Not only are they not extinct, they're out to get revenge on the Catholic church for those centuries of persecution. And it's said that the Illuminati are particularly adept at infiltrating other organizations, so it's hard to know just whom to trust. As in The Da Vinci Code, the hero is Robert Langdon, a Mickey-Mouse-watch-wearing art historian. He's teamed with Vittoria Vetra, a beautiful and brilliant Italian physicist.

As with The Da Vinci Code, it's possible to quibble with the scholarship from time to time: Five micrograms of anything isn't likely to be visible to the naked eye (p. 76), still less would it be the size of a BB (p 86); a couplet isn't a pair of syllables (p. 218); butane wouldn't stay in solution with ethanol (p. 359); and a helicopter couldn't do that (p. 495). There are also a few elements of the plot that are unfortunately reminiscent of the old "Mission: Impossible" television show, and the plot turns on a scientist's going to the trouble of putting a laboratory logo on a home-brew piece of experimental hardware. But those are minor quibbles which shouldn't interfere with your enjoying a cracking good adventure story.

Posted: Mon - July 5, 2004 at 08:53   Main   Category: 

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