Dan Brown, Angels and Demons Review

Overall Rating

Interesting read. Although not as gory and descriptive as The Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons does succeed in holding the readers interest from page to page. A good read for a Dan Brown fan.

There is almost no emphasis laid on building the personalities of the characters inside the book. Sometimes Brown tends to overplay a certain incident from a point of nail biting suspense only to lead it to an anticlimax of sorts.

Dan Brown, Angels and Demons introduces the character of Robert Landon, a religious iconologist and art history teacher at Harvard University, made popular by Brown's recent bestseller - The Da Vinci Code. Just as in The Da Vinci Code, Langdon is coerced out of bed, by Maximilian Kohler, the director of CERN- the world's largest research facility, in relation to the murder of one of his top physicists - Leonardo Vetra. Vetra is not only brutally murdered and left with his eye gorged out, but also branded by the symbol of the ancient secret brotherhood of the Illuminati, the cult dedicated to promoting science and condemning the blind faith of Catholics. Vetra is also a priest with an adopted daughter, Vittoria, who is his colleague at CERN. Vittoria discovers that the final and secret discovery of her father -a vial of antimatter, the most powerful energy source known to man, that the Vetras successfully produced about five thousand nanograms of is missing. Unless the vial is contained in a specifically designed canister powered by a battery source, the antimatter would annihilate upon the slightest contact with air. Almost immediately the canister of antimatter is discovered by the Swiss Guard, somewhere in the Vatican City, counting down to annihilation in twenty four hours, on the eve of the papal election.
Langdon and Vittoria race to the Vatican to find the canister and contain it safely, only to be stopped by the Swiss Guard due to the election, until the Camerlengo receives a threat from the 'assassin' that he has the preferiti and intends to sacrifice each of the four by the hour and plans to eliminate the rest of the cardinals locked in the Sistine chapel, defacing the church by the end of the day. Langdon and Vittoria race against time, digging through the archives, trying to find the clues that lead to the 400-year old trail leading to the secret lair of the Illuminati, taking the reader through ancient churches, fountains, crypts and catacombs, hoping to find the cardinals and the canister before its too late.
The novel is gripping till the last page, with the usual Brownian twists and turns, although it needs to be read with enough suspension of logic. Brown alters the anatomy of the Vatican City and Rome to cater to the plot, adds pizzazz to ancient architecture and the artists of that era. There are certain points in the book that are almost impossible to imagine, like when Langdon survives a nuclear explosion, finds a tarp to land himself safely in the river Tiber, and just as easily is rescued by onlookers. Brown tries to build the characters by giving us an insight into their memories, but it seems more like he is citing incidents of the past for no particular reason. In the end though, it does make for an interesting read.