The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

I found Angels & Demons, the first book in this series, to be much more engrossing than this book.  Which is surprising considering this was the one that had all the hype surrounding it.

About a year after he helped save the Vatican, Robert Langdon is embroiled in a mystery and a murder once again.  This time it is in Italy, where the curator of the Louvre has been murdered and strange symbology points to his killer.  The deceased's granddaughter is along for the ride too because clues that he left her say she should stick to Langon to solve his murder.  A strange monk is intent on finding them though and there are other mysterious players that would like to do anything to prevent Langdon from solving the clues left for him.

Sophie wasn't nearly as strong of a character as her predecessor.  She needed Langdon for almost everything; except for a few things she conveniently knew.  She didn't offer much in the way of dialogue either.  Langdon was little better.  He seemed less personable this time around and like events were outpacing him.  But at least he wasn't as "invincible" as he was in the first book.  I couldn't really care for any of the other characters too.  I predicted the bad guy pretty far in and wasn't surprised to see other characters do some of the actions that they did.  All were pretty predictable.

The plot I was pleased to see was done in a twenty-four hour format again.  I think this helps the book pacing, although this one was still a little long.  And I'm not going to comment on how accurate this book is except to say that it is a work of fiction and I read it as such.  If some of the stuff in it is true, that's great, but it has no bearing on my enjoyment of the book as a work of fiction.  I did find the symbology interesting, and liked the references to Da Vinci.  I thought the beginning offered an interesting premise and was a better lead-in than that of the first book, but the ending felt contrived and too easy.  Everything falling into place when life doesn't really work like that.

Not great, not terrible, not as special as I had been lead to believe.  It was entertaining, but I think it seems like this was a book that was written for tv.

The Da Vinci Code
Copyright 2003
454 pages