2087Title: ANGELS AND DEMONS by Dan Brown Plot Summary This book by Dan Brown is a prequel to his famed and high-impact novel, “The Da Vinci Code”. Set against an intriguingly blended backdrop of theological sculptures and advanced science, “Angels and Demons” is the first adventure story of a symbologist, Robert Langdon. Langdon begins his adventure when he set off to CERN, a nuclear research laboratory located in Geneva, Switzerland, to examine a supposedly non-extant symbol burned on the chest of a dead physicist. The symbol belongs to Illuminati, a secret brotherhood of scientists formed in the Middle Ages. Together with Maximilian Kohler, the CERN’s Director, and Vittoria Vetra, the dead scientist’s daughter, Langdon learns that someone stole a dangerous mass of highly unstable and explosive antimatter from the laboratory and hid it somewhere in the Vatican City. Vatican City is about to begin the conclave, a ceremony that will elect a new Pope. The four cardinals that were most favored to become the next Pope are kidnapped and are about to be sacrificed by an assassin claiming to be of the Illuminati. This assassin actually works for the camerlango, the late Pope’s chamberlain. The search for the missing cardinals takes a higher priority for the Vatican Swiss Guards than the search for the antimatter bomb. Using clues from a poem found on a document supposedly written by Galileo, and clues from Bernini’s sculptures, Langdon, with Vittoria and the Swiss Guards, races to locate the four churches where a prefiriti will be killed each hour and be branded with the Illuminati’s symbols. The efforts of Langdon’s group were not successful. At CERN, Maximilian Kohler discovers that the camerlango is responsible for the death of Vittoria’s father. Kohler flies in to Vatican to extract a confession from the camerlango, and he secretly records their meeting. During the confrontation, the Swiss Guards shot Kohler, but before he died, he was able to give Langdon the videotaped evidence. Then, the camerlango appears to hear a voice from heaven telling him where the antimatter is. He locates the container and brings it with him in a helicopter. Langdon joins the camerlango and they flew as high as possible until the antimatter exploded. Both men survived, with Langdon falling on a river, and the camerlango landing on the rooftop terrace of St. Peter’s Basilica. The people at the St. Peter’s Square believe this to be a miracle and sign from God. People near the river rescue Langdon and place him in a hospital. While lying down, Langdon hears the contents of the videotape. He rushes back to the chapel where the cardinals are about to vote the camerlango as the next Pope. Langdon plays the tape in front of the cardinals who then confronted the camerlango. The fanatic priest defends his act of hiring an assassin to sacrifice four cardinals to save millions of souls. He committed suicide soon after. The cardinals decided to keep secret the acts of the camerlango, in the interest of the Catholic faith. Langdon and Vittoria decided to go with the plan of the cardinals and turned their attention on developing their relationship.
More reviews about the Angels and Demons