The Da Vinci Code

[Takemura]

I'm reading the book right now and man. Its really cool. Twist and suspense and what not. Anyone who hasn't read this should it is cool. ;)

Anyone who has read it can you give your opinion? but no spoilers i'm not done it yet.
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[Camus the Noble]

I like the book. The storyline is well-presented, and I'm a huge fan of conspiracy theories. I literally couldn't put it down until I finished it; I read it in two or three sittings, stopping only to sleep. However, it is as predictable as an atomic clock (barring one twist), and falls into tired clichés near the end. Furthermore, the characters are not particularly interesting, although I think Robert Langdon's character may be better explained in Dan Brown's other book Angels and Demons. I should read that sometime...

By the way, the book was involved in a lawsuit recently. The authors of a book called Holy Blood, Holy Grail, which has a similar conspiracy theory storyline (but is nonfiction), claimed that The Da Vinci Code was an infringement on the copyright for Holy Blood. Personally, I don't see what's wrong with Brown incorporating his research into his book, but I suppose it would come down to the actual wording. Of particular interest is the fact that there is a character named Leigh Teabing in The Da Vinci Code. Richard Leigh co-authored Holy Blood with Baigent, and "Teabing" just happens to be an anagram of Baigent's last name.

[Hawk Thanatos]

MOST OVERRATED BOOK EVER

If you don't read much it's fine, but if you've read a book or two then it's flaws are obvious. Pïss poor characterization being it's biggest problem and the story the only thing that manages to 'save' it.

[St. Ajora]

The Da Vinci Code is utterly ridiculous. From the first page attesting to the fact that the secret organizations presented within are real in that contest, to the last, cliched and uninteresting page, it's a book of pure BS. Hey let's go there, no wait an hour we are here and oh look, we're off again to another place! The setting jumps around too much, Robert, Sophie and Teabing (I always read it as TeaBag) are lifeless, predictable and flat characters, and the writing...UGH! While I was going through it, I had a sneaking suspicion that *I* wrote it. It was very, very amateurish and cluttered.

Don't even get me started on how moronic Dan Brown is, believing in that silly conspiracy crap.

[Sophita]

I hated this book. Hated, hated, haaaaaated this book. It is badly written, poorly paced, the characters have all the depth of a thimble, and the story is absolute crap. On top of that, it's full of errors - I'm sorry, I'm no theologian, but when a character referred to the Dead Sea Scrolls as early Christian documents, I threw my head back and laughed out loud.

And all the "surprises" were so obvious! I guessed them long before the so-called experts did. A child could have solved those puzzles - and probably quicker, too.

The only thing it has going for it is the "OMG CONSPIRACY". And Holy Blood, Holy Grail (Holy Blood, Holy Grail wiki link) beat them to it by about 20 years. And they actually published as non-fiction.

It's a complete waste of space. I'm convinced the only people who like this book are those who've read less than 5-10 books in their adult lives; that's the only way I could see anyone ever liking this book, as it is so very, very awful.

The only positive thing I can say for it is I've found it makes a really good door stopper.
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SCII month continues! DueFiumi.com

John Layfield wrote:

But bubbles... children love bubbles! XD

[St. Ajora]

Sophita lays the smackdown! You said everything I wanted to say, but so much better, haha. *audience applaudes*

[Arcana]

Sophita echoed what I thought about the book, too. However, I can give a much more long, detailed analytical smackdown for your reading enjoyment. When I finished it I had the urge to write a long blog post about it which listed, among other things, the factual errors in the book. Like how the Priory of Sion is... well, it should be in the review.

The Da Vinci Code (Book)
Wow, what a piece of... pop-culture fiction.

I don't know if anyone's read it, but anyone who has a critical eye for fiction will notice the glaring lack of style in Dan Brown's writing. I felt myself going into editor mode when reading this and mentally suggesting ways to spice up the writing. It's pretty drab.

There's very little characterization, despite the massive overuse of characters thinking to themselves (notated by italics, no less). I hated Dune by Herbert for the same reason. Both authors seemed to like to shift from the head of one character to another in the span of about three paragraphs. There are a TON of perspectives that the author uses in this book - the 454 page novel has over one-hundred chapters. I should add that I read the Illustrated Version of this book, which is a hardcover, glossy version of the book that has pictures of some of the symbols mentioned. If you DO want to read this book (don't worry, there *IS* some merit to it), then I highly recommend the illustrated version because it gives you nice photographs of potential tourist spots you might want to see if you're ever in Europe. The illustrated version has less than 454 pages because its pages are larger, and there are pictures.

In any case... it kind of reminded me of amateur writing... except worse. It really felt kind of like taking one of my stories, removing the character thoughts and comments to themselves, removing the characterization and the plot, and then throwing in a bunch of researched conspiracy theories. Brown uses a lot of strange writing devices that just really turn me off. My friend Ellie likes to write dramatic pauses by inserting a paragraph break, for example. She does this often... I personally think it's too often, but it's maybe one per third or fourth scene or so, and Ellie's scenes are quite long, so you end up not noticing. Dramatic pauses are fine, but they really, really cease to be dramatic when you encounter one every scene. Since this is a cat and mouse type thriller, every break ends up being a dramatic pause before the change to another perspective. Dan Brown makes extensive use of dramatic pauses to the point where they're nauseating. If you want to see how absolutely bad a story can get by misusing dramatic pauses via paragraph breaks, go read The Da Vinci Code.

Oh, I should also mention that another thing that drove me nuts was how often perspectives changed. There were sections that were three paragraphs long before you'd hit the asterix. That's crazy. You would end up reading about the transponders on a truck turning on in two paragraphs just before the chapter ended, after reading about the security officeres who turned them on.

And, finally, talk about convenient use of coincidence. There's a fine line between making your characters logically conclude something, and then having something appear as if it was coincidental. Brown ends up writing a word, and then throwing you into a massively long flashback, and then tossing you BACK out into the normal world, where the character's ended up figuring out a solution to their problem. Oooooh boy.

But I'm not done yet. There are strange moments in the book where Brown just ends up talking like a text book, or a tourist guide. Actually, while I seem to list this as a fault, it's actually not too bad, because, along with the pictures, it's a decent way to learn about interesting buildings and churches and stuff like that in Europe. This is one reason why I think the illustrated version is the one you should try to get if you ever want to read this book. You'll learn a lot more and it's a much more satisfying experience.

So what IS good about this book? Well, the book is centered around a guy who studies religious symbolism, so if you like religious symbolism, you might find some interesting references. If you're rather unaware of Christianity and its roots from pagan rituals, then you might find this book rather fascinating, as there are a number of conspiracy theories it lifts from other writers (if you go here, http://www.irr.org/da-vinci-code.html, you will read about some of the sources, and some of the flaws of its book; there are others that I can think of that are not listed in the above link). It talks a lot about the Goddess of Christianity, and reports some interesting theories on what the Grail is, and talks a lot about the concept of the cup, the pentacles, and so forth. If you're familiar with paganism or alternative spirituality, then that's not very big news to you, but hey, you might either learn something obscure, or get a laugh over it. If you're not, then it's interesting to learn about these things in the context of a detective story than from a non-fiction book.

By the way, Brown claims that the book is "rooted in fact" in its preface, which is actually one reason why it's been showered in so much controversy. Because of this claim, authors have looked at it in detail and tore it apart, especially some of its analysis about Da Vinci's work. If he had not claimed so vehemently in the front that the facts in the book are real (note though, that all of the named characters in the book are fictional) then I suspect that most people would not have cared.

I have a feeling that [info]myaru would end up being rather amused by this book, both for the reasons of its bad writing, and for its somewhat questionable use of its sources. :)

Everyone else might consider picking it up just to learn what all of the controversy surrounding the book is, because apparently it's very popular. I also hate to think that uneducated folk out there are picking this up and are considering this "good fiction" or "good writing". It's entertaining, I'll give it that; I after all finished reading it and got rather wrapped up in its little mystery. The descriptions of its various locations, the churches and cathedrals and museums and artwork are fascinating. But if you can't recognize just how contrived the story is, and how dull the characters are, and how uninterseting the writing is, then you really need to revisit English class and read some books from there. I've read better amateur fiction than this, although, truth be told, a lot of amateur fiction I've seen is simply much too simplistic in concept to hold my interest. Reading a book about unravelling a mystery about a secret brotherhood protecting a deep religious secret based in the real world is a bit more interesting to me than a book about a wizard who kills a dragon, or something like that.

You know, Ellie. With your writing style and your presentation, you might have a pretty decent chance. If crappy writing like Brown's can become a bestseller, then I'd be shocked (or, more likely, deeply saddened) if your flair and style of writing doesn't get recognized.


The modern suites on cards: spades, clubs, diamonds, and hearts, are derived from the suites of the Tarot: swords, wands, pentacles, and cups. Sorry, this has been shown as untrue; playing card suites were discovered to have existed before the Tarot.

Venus does not trace a perfect pentacle in the sky every 8 years.

The Nag Hammadi Library is not "lost Christian gospels", as claimed. There is no proof that they were to be burned by the Romans to try to "cover up" paganism.

Apparently, he got the discovery date of the Dead Sea Scrolls wrong.

Here's a good one. The Priory of Sion, which is an important brotherhood in the book that has lasted a thousand years, is actually founded in 1956 by Pierre Plantard, who was a conspiracy theorist.

There are also more errors... http://www.gracestillwater.org/messages/davincicode.htm has some more.


The little tidbit about the Priory of Sion wasn't in there, but I think all I'll do is link you to the corresponding Wikipedia article and have you look up the facts for yourselves.... like the fact that the Priory of Sion was founded in 1956 by a Frenchman.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priory_of_sion
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Woo, 2000 posts as of Tuesday, 2007 August 28.

[Ninjar]

While being subpar, I thought that it was alright. That is, of course, because I have entirely too much time on my hands. You also forget that all thinghs aside, you did finish it. This means that it is not so bad as to keep one from reaching the end. I have come upon several books that I could not, no matter how hard I endeavored, finish. Cold Mountain comes to mind above all others. I absolutely hated that book with all my being.

I'm just trying to say that you don't give it enough credit. At least you finished it. I find that the fault that people find against it is that is contradicts christian beliefs. This is not to say that this is your reason for hating it. :P

[Arcana]

My real reason (as stated in the bigbutt long review above) is that at the beginning of the book, Dan Brown makes the claim that the facts that the story is based on is true, when in fact there are an incredible number of factual errors in his novel. If he would have caved and stated that his book was, in fact, just a bunch of facts that are loosely based on the truth, and that some were twisted in order to make an interesting story, then my rants on how bad the book is would be totally unfounded.


... well, not totally. But I'd probably have much less reason to hate it. :) The book was still poorly written, in my opinion, and its characters utterly uninteresting.
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Woo, 2000 posts as of Tuesday, 2007 August 28.

[Ninjar]

I can agree with you there. I do give him some credit due to the fact that I finished the book. I do enjoy reading, but some books can be tests of my patience as I said before. It was a poorly written piece of 'literature.'

[Shrew]

I hate The Da Vinci Code, for the reasons already stated. Random buzz facts, poor characterization; it's basically a non-fiction book (Holy Blood, Holy Grail) given a narrative. While I don't think you can say Dan Brown really plagiarized anything from the folks that sued him, I can understand why they sued him. His book is their book with plot.

Now, I have to admit, that I'm kind of looking forward to The Da Vinci Code movie. I mean, Ron Howard, Ian McKellan, Audrey Tautou, Tom Hanks. With this cast and director, I'm guessing they'll be able to force some memorable characters into Dan Brown's lifeless constructs. And hopefully the script-writer will have the sense to cut the nonsense facts and focus on the look at religion, and that thrill of chase and suspense that works so much better in a movie than in a book.

It's not like there's no precedence of stupid books into good movies. I mean, who remembers that Jaws was a book? I'll bet that in the future Jurassic Park is going to seen a lot more than read. There are plenty of others.
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Fear our Vagueness.

[Jorge Prima]

[Arcana]

I should add that if you're now curious about the huffaw and the controversy and stuff like that, if you're going to read a version of this book, do yourself a favour and read the Illustrated Version of the book ONLY. Don't get the novel version. At least the illustrated one has pictures of the artwork and the museums involved, which helps give you a sense of the rich amount of culture that Europe has to offer. It makes me want to visit France, now. :) But yeah, the pictures make the book bearable and it makes you want to take a vacation through Europe.
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Woo, 2000 posts as of Tuesday, 2007 August 28.

[Schala-Kid]

i want to thank everyone for posting their opinions. i haven't read the book due to all the hype that surrounds it. i don't feel the urge to do so, and having read these posts, i now think i'll save myself the agony of reading it.

yet as an adult, i don't read as much as i should, and i think if i did read it, i might enjoy it (because only people who don't read much probably will according to sophita ;)).

i'm not big on watching movies without having read the book, but for the hell of it, i think i might give the movie a miss too. it's quite okay to go through life without having read or seen the same thing as everyone else, who gets all hyped about something for a few years and then it's gone, or who hates it for just as long and then lets it go.

i'll pass on the whole darn thing, thanks for the opinions though!

[Arcana]

Well, you might almost consider reading it simply because of all of the hype and controversy it's caused. It's much more informative to say, "I tried to read it and didn't enjoy it" than "A bunch of people told me it was bad, so I didn't read it."
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Woo, 2000 posts as of Tuesday, 2007 August 28.