The adventure described in this book would not have impressed anyone 20 or even 10 years ago. Today, in a world post millennium countdown, where people have been witness to events like 9/11, the big tsunami in Indonesia, the massive earthquake in Pakistan, sky-rocketing gas prices, etc, etc., a novel that proposes the literal and absolute annihilation of the Vatican and Christianity as we know it is not such a fantastic scenario. I daresay this will probably be the next big event the world will bear witness to. Let’s picture it: the Pope is dead (we later learn, not of natural causes, but we all know this is not new for the Vatican, Pope John Paul I died mysteriously just a few days after being elected, to cite but one example). The College of Cardinals is gathered for Conclave (which is the election of a new Pope), of which 4 “preferiti” are surreptitiously missing, kidnapped by an alleged Islamic terrorist, being killed one by one, on the hour, in the most brutal, public and carnivorous of ways, in key churches of Rome, which placement leads to the layout of the all time famous but never found Illuminati Diamond, figuratively representative of the Earth, Air, Fire and Water, prime elements of this planet. All of this, for the sake of Truth. It bears repeating some famous words by Pontius Pilate: “And what is “Truth”?”. Will the Angels and the Demons of our souls cancel each other out as the two opposing properties studied by a scientist in the novel? Will the confrontation of extreme goodness and extreme evil leave us with an abundance of… nothingness? This is the premise of the novel.

I found the references involved in the protagonist’s visit to the Vatican archives, the walk along the streets of Rome, and the detailed cultural references fascinating.

As dense and intellectual as this novel intends to be, it lacked the capacity to amaze me. The book reads like a movie script, and literature that attempts to accommodate high intellectualism to an every day soap opera will fail to be qualified as a work of quality every time. That being said, I am sure Mr. Brown will pocket quite a few more million when this novel, just like the second installment in the Robert Langdon series, “The Da Vinci Code”, makes it to the big screen. The book is written in a way that any famous Hollywood Director with an ample budget will be able to follow without any challenges. So even if one does not read the book, one will enjoy the movie, which is all right for the purposes of entertainment, but where does that leave us with the promise of quality literature?

The story is fast-paced – all the action takes place in one day, starting in the wee hours of the morning with a phone call placed by a concerned scientist in Switzerland to Harvard Professor of Symbology Robert Langdon. It finishes that same day at midnight in St. Peter’s Square– when all Hell brakes loose. I recommend reading it alongside the “Eyewitness Travel Guide: Rome”, published by DK Publishing, and then booking a ticket on the next Alitalia flight to the Golden City (because you will want to go as soon as you finish it.)

You should visit the author’s website (www.danbrown.com) for further anecdotes on how the novel came to be, his semi-private audience with the Pope, and the creation of the key elements in the story: the ambigrams.

When reading it, may I recommend the “Illustrated Edition”, since this book (just like “The Da Vinci Code”) has many references to historical, geographical and scientific theories and places, that may, at best, fall through the cracks and, at worse, leave the reader lost in literary limbo.

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Created Jun 22, 2006 at 10:10am • Submit your own review...