Book Review: Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)

by Tristan

Angels and Demons was my first taste of Dan Brown (The Da Vinci Code is lurking in my book bag at the moment, most likely planning to sneak out, corner me, and force me to read it in the next few days), and I must say that I enjoyed it. While it wasn't the greatest book I've ever read, it certainly was one of the hardest to put down. There aren't many books that will keep me awake late into the night, and then refuse to let me sleep even after I've stopped reading. While it took me a few days to get past the first one hundred pages, I devoured the rest of the book in about a day. A friend of mine described it as the literary equivalent of crack -- I'd have to agree.

Those at the book discussion all seemed to have enjoyed the book, despite Brown's often-controversial plot which centers around the struggle between science and religion in the modern world. It is the story of Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor of religious symbology, who finds himself thrust into saving the Vatican from a time-bomb planted by the Illuminati, an ancient brotherhood of scientists with a vendetta against the Catholic Church.

While going from Massachusetts to Switzerland to Rome in under 24 hours and still having time to decipher a centuries-old mystery, save the world, and fall in love is just a tad implausible, Brown's brilliant sense of pacing and his ability to come up with genuinely unexpected twists are what make Angels and Demons a great thriller. Even for those who don't generally read the genre, the characters alone will draw you into the story, and the points raised by the book will leave you thinking.