I know there are a few people here who've read Dan Brown's best seller, and I was rather hoping to find out what the B77 collective thought of it?
I just finished reading it this afternoon. By the second half, I was going mad with frustration. I don't think I've ever come across something so badly edited. Really obvious things that leapt out at me:
- Elizabeth I is not buried in a private apsidal chapel. She's buried with her sister in an aisle of the Lady Chapel.
- Since when have Londoners picniced beneath the willows in St James' Park, when the willows are on the water's edge and therefore fenced off. And tourists don't feed the pelicans - it's prohibited and the likes of me yell at anyone too thick to understand the notice. Also, you cannot see the Palace of Westminster from there.
- Why did Langton make such a big deal out of being suprised by the Temple Church - anyone who even vaguely studies this sort of stuff would know that there are 13th century knights' effigies there - there are even casts of some of them in the V&A!
- As for "Biggin Hill Executive Airport". LOL
- And I was irked by the fact that a so-called expert in codes and religion, who had evidently visited monastic churches before, didn't realise that the Westminster Chapter House had only one door. It doesn't take that much brain power to figure out that that's the usual cloister design!
Those are just the bits that are still haunting me. There are plenty more! http://www.lisashea.com/hobbies/art/davincicode.html Yet the author has the temerity to state in his preface that "All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.".
I dread to think what the French made of his interpretation of Paris?
Aside from that, I felt it read like a whistle-stop unsubstantiated tour through books I have already read. Aside from the basic thriller-chase plot, there's not a lot to keep you interested if you know "The Templar Revelation" or "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" or any of the other Grail conspiracy books that have hit the mass market in the past 15-20 years. There's something that irritates me about an author who can do so well out of basically ripping off someone else's work, and still makes elementary errors.
I shouldn't get started on the style (there are reasons I don't read this sort of book ordinarily... chapter openings like... "The Hawker 731's twin Garrett TFE-731 engines thundered, powering the plane skyward with gut-wrenching force".. is one of them ).
But above all, how can a book which purports to be revealing a goddess-worship cult, have a central female character who is dumb as a stump? Sophie is simply used as an object on which to project chunks of background text, whilst she sits there and goes "oh yes, I never thought of that".