Dan Brown - Angels and Demons

Here's a quick book review of the book I just finished.

"Angels & Demons" is the first adventure of Robert Langdon, who is familiar to most readers and movie goers as the hero of "The Da Vinci Code".

I thought this was a quick read, and very accessible, even though it was over 700 pages.

The plot got a little muddy at the end, with, I thought, more twists than necessary. It almost seemed like a science fiction story to me, except that the author made a couple of classic mistakes when including the science.

One classic mistake you often see a mainstream writer make when they attempt to include science in a story is to bend the science to fit the plot, instead of the other way around. In this case, the design of the "containment vessel" was needlessly complex, in a way that no practical scientist would have done. However, it was needed for the plot, so that is how it was written.

There were a couple of neat themes that Mr. Brown included, such as a sideline discussion of why there is a conflict between faith and reason. The plot gives us several answers.

He also had the odd way of including some ideas in a prominent way, that didn't seem to advance the story at all. The high speed airplane was one such idea. I don't see how it advanced the story at all.

I think this was a good book but not a great one.

The paper back is published by Pocket Books.