Angels & Demons

Hmm...

So, I have a lot of mixed feelings about the book that I'm not really sure how to write out. I knew before reading this that Dan Brown and The Davinci Code was pretty controversial. It dealt with some pretty heavy subjects, like religion. I, myself, am not religious so I consider myself pretty ignorant in matters like this. Because of that, I kind of avoided the book and Dan Brown for the longest time because I wasn't sure if I would really get it. But, after a while, I decided to just go ahead and read it. Maybe a lot of things would fly over my head or wouldn't affect me, but it would be an interesting read to say the least.

My final thoughts on it were eventually this: It's an entertaining read at the least, but you have to sort of “turn off your brain” if you want to enjoy it. I'm sorry if that doesn't make much sense, I'll try to explain it down below.

I knew that Dan Brown tended to be very “liberal” about interpretations on historical events religious matters, so I read with that in mind. There are different things that Dan Brown changes around about history and other similar subjects. Some of these are pretty hard to suspend disbelief for...so it's something that's very hard to work around (I personally just pretended this all was happening in some parallel universe, haha). I don't know if this means that this novel is very poorly written or if Brown just took a lot of artistic licenses, but that's a hurdle I had to overcome in reading this book.

Another thing that Brown does in his writing is that he jumps around a lot from different characters and events. I know that this is supposed to be showing the entire story through different perspectives, but I sometimes feel that it really contributed nothing or was just a waste of space. It also felt jarring at times. Sometimes it would feel there was no focus, and other times it felt like it was cutting off a good action sequence.

Also, there were some things that just seemed...implausible to me. I mean, this entire books kind of relies on you having to suspend your disbelief and having to accept some unorthodox interpretations and whatnot, but it got too unbelievable to me at some times. Like, there are countless researchers and scientists studying these topics, and Robert Langdon was the only guy who could figure these puzzles out? There are quite a few other examples, but they're spoilery so I won't get into them. I'll just say this: some scenes were making me scratch my head.

I don't know if this was just me or not, but did anyone else feel like Vetra could have been completely taken out and the novel wouldn't have really lost anything of substance? I feel like she just fulfills the “Sexy Foreign Love Interest Trope”. I don't know, it might just be me. The romance itself was poorly written, and I cared very little for it.

There is a whole theme about science vs. religion, which I know is a pretty powerful debate, but the theme didn't really resonate with me, so I can't comment on it. I'm sure people that are more knowledgeable with the subject can comment on this.

One of the biggest issues I had with the book was Brown's writing itself. I can usually overlook bad prose if the story / characters are good, but this wasn't the case here. The writing was pretty choppy to me and not paced really well. There are some weird descriptions here and there and it sometimes felt like a juvenile trying to write more advanced.

But, with everything said and done? I still found it entertaining. It wasn't a boring book at all. I got some enjoyment out of reading it, if just for the fact that it was a mediocre thriller that was able to hold my attention until the end. I've read a lot of books that are so bad or so boring that I wasn't able to finish it. Angels & Demons didn't fall in either of those categories. It's just a fun book with some action that's decent to read. Yes, you have to overcome many hurdles to get some pleasure out of reading this book, but it wasn't absolutely terrible. This might be because I don't know a whole lot about the controversy surrounding Dan Brown and the Da Vinci Code. But if you can suspend your disbelief far enough (and I mean REALLY far) and have a tolerance for mediocre writing...it's not terrible.

And like I said, if you just pretend this book takes place in some alternate universe, it makes it a lot easier.