Dan Brown - The Da Vinci Code - Review

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The Da Vinci Code – by Dan Brown

Rating (for the illiterate): * * * (3 out of 5)

Short Review (for the impatient):
Fairly standard potboiler thriller that became a bestseller due to the brilliant marketing concept of including religion and conspiracy theories in the same book.

Long Review (for the curious or bored):
It seems that everybody has read this book. It has been on the bestseller lists for an unbelievable amount of time and has been the subject of much controversial debate. All this goes to show that. as Mel Gibson demonstrated with The Passion of the Christ , it is possible to make a lot of money these days in the arena of controversial religion-based entertainment without creating anything that would otherwise be noteworthy.

For anyone who is still not aware, this book is a mystery / thriller that starts with the murder of a gallery curator. Various clues left at the scene of the murder spark off a chain of events that lead the protagonist, academic Robert Langdon, on an international treasure hunt to uncover all manner of plots and counterplots involving secret societies, famous works of art, and fundamental secrets about the whole Christian religion.

As a thriller, this is fairly standard stuff. The clues and codes are pretty interesting, but no more clever than anything left by the serial killers in a Patricia Cornwell novel. The suspense is thrilling, but no more so than your normal Robert Ludlum type book. The characters are only as well developed as they need to be to keep the story moving.

The two things that have made this book such a sensation are the claims it makes with regard to certain aspects of the Christian church, and the specific references to various famous works of art and notable historical locations that make you want to go and see them for yourself. Of course, as soon as you start incorporating religion in such a way, you are bound to spark intense debate. Critics have both alternately derided Dan Brown for writing heretical nonsense and hailed him for revealing fantastic secrets about the Church. Which is all great for sales as people want to read and make up their own minds.

For me, I have no idea whether any of the material in this book is true or not. I suspect that it is impossible to ever know for sure. I think Dan Brown has been a genius for managing to incorporate this subject matter into a book so well because he has made a lot of money out of it and I wish I had thought of the idea first. But I think you are foolish if you ever forget that this is primarily a work of fiction and get too heated up by any of its controversial claims.

Overall, this book is ordinary. It is a standard throwaway thriller that would be easy to read in a couple of days on holiday. If you just want to find out what all the fuss is about, you’re probably best to wait for the movie.

 

If it is so ordinary why do you give it such a high grade?

You deride the value of your Erikson fives by giving a book you describe as ordinary and unexciting a three.

I agree with you on your review though, the book is a very uninteresting and basic thriller with expected plot twists and no big surprises that is fuelled by cliffhangers at the end of every other two page chapter. The veneer of conspiray theories and religious mysticism is what has made all the difference.

 

Good question Joacquin.

I guess my review is a rebuttal against all the hype that this book has experienced. Whilst it does not live up to the hype, it is not a bad book. 3/5 is the middle rating of a 5 star system. 2/5 would be a below average book. The Da Vinci Code is not below average to me. It was an easy read that kept me interested to the end so was not a waste of time.

 

I rather enjoyed it

 

We had a TV archeological review of the book recently (Tony Robinson of Baldric fame does an archeological series called Time Team) Anyway it pretty much derided all of the books contents and proved (in my mind at least) that it's based on a complete con.

Trying to recall hazy memories of it but:

The Knights Templar:
Supposedly the custodians of the Holy Grail, somehow keeping the secret of which is how they made their money by blackmailing the Church. In reality the money was made from protecting pilgrims to the Holy land, and developing the first known banking & credit system. They were almost certainly brought down by a greedy French king, and Church folks envious of their political power. They only admitted to heretical thoughts under torture, and recanted their statements when the torture was removed. The pope was mislead into excomunicating? them and recanted that fairly soon after.

Rennes-le-Château - Church in France somewhere.
Supposedly the local priest discovered that Jesus had married Mary M, & the Holy grail was in fact the blood line of Jesus, which has been protected by the Priory of Sion. The Priory of Sion turns out to be a hoax invented for a laugh by a group of French surrealist bohemians. The so called "documents" of their leadership proven to be fakes.

Now, the main exception of it all being "nonsense", from an archeological point of view, was the part about Mary Magdeline. It would appear that she probably played a much greater role than the church would have us believe. She only became "a prostitute" around the 10th century (I forget the exact dates) as one of the Popes decided to have a little re-write of the bible. The "Nag Hammadi", the so-called lost books of the bible (carbon dated to arround the same time as the orriginal books of the new-testament and a certain amount of evidence exists to show they were purged from the bible as they didn't fit with how the church wanted Jesus to be portrayed) indicate she was a disciple, and probably the main disciple. This fits with the book with respect to the painting of the Last Supper where the image of John? looks decidedly femine, especially in comparison to the other disciples.

 

It's a fantasy book based on some very recognizable content. It's brilliant. I rather enjoyed the way how he bashed the entire roman catholic system. Refreshing from the holier than thou attitude of the church.

Read it liked it. Although I have to favor Brown's Angels and Demons above this one.

 

Definitely with you on that Apeman. I'd rank them in this order: Angels & Demons - Da Vinci Code - Deception Point - Digital Fortress.

Digital Fortress was a waste of time imo.

 

You know that book led me to the mathmatical mechanism by which the the "Golden Ratio" appears in nature so often.

It has to do with the Fibannacci (sp?) sequence and replicating units...

I showed it to my calculus professor and he was quite impressed.

Imagine a unit replicating once and adding its offspring to itself...then on each successive term of the sequence only the units that had been in existence prior to the previous term get replicated.
At some point the process stops and the last group of offspring is separated from the replicating precursors...the ratio between the two approaches the Golden Ratio as the sequence continues to large numbers.

Now imagine these units are a sort of embryonic scaffolding.

 

bah, too complicated

 

I read the first two chapters of this book. I must say the first chapter was off to a great start with the scene in the museum. Then it slipped into the regions of the banal and mediocre with it's writing style and story in the second chapter. So I stopped. I really can't see with the hype is about this book. If I wanted to hear about religious conspiracies and scandal in the Catholic church, I'll watch the Boston news.

 

Seconded. After reading that, I have absolutely no desire to read any of his other books.

 

Carcaroth: That was a very informative show which seemed to discredit nearly every part of The Da Vinci Code

After watching that, I decided not to read the book.

BTW, In regards to the painting in which it seems John is a woman - John is very often portrayed in a feminate manner by Da Vinci, probably because his sexuality leaned that way.