While it has generated a
lot of hype, when I read the Da Vinci Code I found it to be little more than an average thriller. Although the plot,
involving conspiracy theories involving Christ, the Church, the Holy grail, and a certain other biblical
character is
quite interesting, Brown’s writing style isn’t very involving and it’s also rather heavy-handed. He practically tells you when to be surprised, when to be tense, etc – there seems to be no subtlety in the writing at all. Added to this he constantly tells you things rather than shows them to you, making it
feel like he got too
caught up in his own cleverness and forgot that he was meant to be telling a story. The main character, Harvard professor of symbology Robert Langdon, is quite a likeable character that we can sympathise with but most of the other characters in the book are fairly thinly developed. Overall I found The a Vinci Code rather
disappointing, less of a thriller than I had been led to believe and more a slightly dubious lecture series. One or two of the surprises in the book caught me off guard, but many others – including what was supposed to be the biggest shock of all – I saw coming quite a way off. The pace is slow, the book would have been considerably better if it had lost about a third of its nearly 600 pages.
If you like mystery more than action and
particularly if you’re interested in fiction of a religious nature, you may well like The Da Vinci Code. Personally I found it quite uninvolving, albeit it did have a certain page-turning quality. However the ending was disappointing and I certainly don’t feel particularly inclined to read any more of Dan Brown’s novels. (The first few chapters of “Angels and demons” is included at the end of the paperback edition of this book, and admittedly it does seem to start at a significantly faster pace… but I still think I’ll give it a miss.)
Thanks for reading,
CaptainD
(The related link will take you to a more detailed review of the book.)
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