Customer Reviews

The Da Vinci Code - Special Illustrated Edition

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is so well crafted, you can't tell what is actual fact from Mr. Brown's cleaver imagination. Highly recommend this book!

This unabridged edition of this intriguing book kept me looking for reasons to go driving. I will also reread the book just to cross reference the history and art references. For the too busy Americans, all of us, this is a great read (listen).

I bought into the hype over this book and approached it quite eagerly as it promised intrigue and devious puzzles and carefully researched history. Boy, was I disappointed! Dan Brown's writing is annoyingly repetitious (how many times does he use the phrase "the sacred feminine"?) He also has the irritating habit of telling the reader that he is withholding information just to make the reader wait. It's one thing to withhold information; it;s another to tell you it's happening. The former can lead to well-crafted suspense. The latter is just a crude attempt to be suspenseful. And the puzzles that are supposed to be so clever are pretty obvious - simple anagrams and basic ciphers.

This is all compounded by the awful narration of Paul Michael who drones on and on with but a modicum of inflection. Even at the most harrowing moments (there are a few anyway) he never communicates any sense of danger or excitement; just a matter-of-fact recitation of Brown's prose.

I've finally read this so much talked about book. And what a dissapointment. Don't be misguided by the catholic close-minded, but don't be fooled too by the supposed intricacy of the code: half of the quests in the book are childish to make me cry over a stupid, blockbuster-born couple of protagonists, while the other half weren't quests at all, but guessworks for the book actors.

So don't expect much excitement by that side. Literary qualities, ITOH, are completely missing: this book will not be remembered five years from now, unless I've already lost track with current readers, but that would imply a much greater level of ignorance amongst the common people, and I don't believe it.

This is, in short, another cliche movie script slightly baked up to make a book. Handsome couple, hinted romance, action scenes... chapters are short to the ridiculous, the seem more cutscenes than real chapters... is current average attention time-span that of a snail?

And last but not least, this book is PC to tears. The complainers are these kind of people who can't stand a single critique to his "faith", be them in one side or the other.

Excellent Read. Just pick it up...