The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Da Vinci Code
Book Review: "The Da Vinci Code" is a Trojan Horse
Summary: 3 Stars
"The Da Vinci Code" is a Trojan horse. On the outside, it's a gripping murder mystery penned by Dan Brown, a masterful writer of fiction. On the inside, the reader can easily mistake speculative material for fact. Several points that Brown's characters endeavor to establish are not true or are at best speculation; among them:
1 - The divinity of Jesus Christ was determined by nothing more than a vote of fourth-century bishops at the Council of Nicaea.
2 - One of Brown's characters states: "Constantine commissioned and financed a new Bible, which omitted those gospels that spoke of Christ's human traits and embellished those gospels that made Him godlike. The earlier gospels were outlawed, gathered up, and burned."
3 - Jesus Christ was married to Mary Magdalene, and together they had children and established a "royal bloodline" that exists to this day.
Brown's characters' present these assertions as fact; however, there is good reason to suspect they are far from the truth or just plain false.
1 - According to one of Brown's characters, the Council of Nicaea, held in 325 A.D., determined Jesus' divinity by merely voting on it (page 233). However, determining the divinity of Jesus Christ was not among the issues that prompted Constantine to assemble this Council. The Council was convened to discuss and evaluate a new perspective that sprang up within the church and endeavored to deny Jesus' deity. The Council ultimately affirmed a long-standing apostolic doctrine (that is, established truths and historical accounts that originated with actual eyewitnesses of Jesus' miracles over three centuries earlier). The Council overwhelmingly confirmed His deity based on a thorough evaluation of this new perspective in comparison to the eyewitness-based apostolic doctrines.
2 - Constantine did not select or omit different versions of the Gospels, as one of Brown's characters states (pages 231 and 234). He merely initiated the production of fifty new copies of the existing Bible to ensure more widespread distribution and use of it throughout the Roman Empire. The content of the Bible was already well established before Constantine's birth, evidenced by a list of nearly all of the New Testament books (including the names of the four Gospels or references thereto) found on the Muratorian Fragment, dated approximately 190 A.D., nearly a century before Constantine's birth.
3 - To support the proposition that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married, one of Brown's characters explains that this "royal bloodline" has been "chronicled in exhaustive detail by scores of historians." This character then refers another character (and at the same time, the reader) to a list of these historians' books (page 253), all of which actually exist. The "tome" among them, according to this character, is "Holy Blood, Holy Grail." However, one of the "historians" who wrote that book describes the book's material as something other than historical fact.
Writing in "The Introduction to the Paperback Edition," one of the authors of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail," described the material upon which that book is based as "academically suspect" among historians. Describing the three authors' approach to writing the book, he states, "It was with a vision akin to that of the novelist that we created our book." And, "...unlike the professional historian, the novelist is accustomed to an approach such as ours. He is accustomed to synthesizing diverse material, to making connections more elusive than those explicitly preserved in documents. He recognizes that truth may not be confined only to recorded facts but often lies in more intangible domains-in cultural achievements, in myths, legends, and traditions; in the psychic life of both individuals and entire peoples." Note to the reader: this is one of the "historians" referred to by Brown's character.
Brown packages these and other vast assertions made by his characters in an excellent murder mystery that is bursting at the seams with highly detailed and very interesting descriptions of myths, legends, religious and pagan symbols, numerology, cryptology, and every other "ology" that's out there. The sheer volume of these presumably accurate descriptions, and Brown's technique for cleverly weaving them into his gripping murder mystery, readily lulls the reader into accepting everything presented by his characters as fact.
Just as the Trojans should have been in that mythological classic, readers of The Da Vinci Code should beware. There's great can't-put-it-down entertainment here, crafted by a gifted fiction writer; however, the perceptive reader will be wary of taking anything as fact without first checking credible sources for confirmation.
Book Review: "The Da Vinci Code"- Unbelievable Story!
Summary: 5 Stars
When I first started to read "The Da Vinci Code", in my mind I had a feeling that I would read a cheesy crime and detection type of story. After 15 minutes of reading, I found out that I was so wrong. The story is anything but cheesy.The story took place in France when a Harvard professor and internationally known symbologist was waken up by a phone call the French intelligence department. Later on he found out that he was the only suspect of the murder of the curator of the Louvre museum. The reason why he was the suspect was they were supposed to meet by the time the curator was murdered and before he died, the curator left clues on the wall that had professor Langdon's name.
The cryptologist, agent Neveu, who involved in the crime was the curator's granddaughter and she believed that professor Langdon was innoccent. She planned to help him escape and during the run-away, she found out that her grandfather was the Grand Master of a secret society whose previous Grand Masters were Boticelli, Da Vinci, Newton, Victor Hugo, and other famous scientis and artis Unlike other crime and suspect novels, this novel is based on facts and that secret society is one of them.
The secret society had a mission to keep the secret of the Holy Grail alive. However, as the Grand Master and three other members died, the secret was about to be lost forever. Professor Langdon and agent Neveu found out that before the curator died, he left clues on the famous painting of Da Vinci "Mona Lisa" as well as in other places. During the runaway, the unclued the secrets with the help of a friend, who by the end turned out to be the person behind the dead of the curator.
The story is intriguing and unbelievable. It fuses facts with fictions and after reading the book for the first time, I found myself doing research for the information that described in the book. To my astonishment, all of them were very true, including the description of "The Last Supper".
"The Da Vinci Code" leads to one possibility of the life of Christ and the Holy Grail. As history are stories from the past, the ultimate truth may be covered by many layers. The quest to find the truth is risky and painful and sometimes the truth is unbelievable. My advice to those who are Catholic is please keep your mind open while reading this book and it will be very hard to read the story for the first time.
"The Da Vinci Code" is such an incredible book that it can cause controversies among the readers. I praise Dan Brown for his skills of observations and descriptions. The story really opens my eyes to new possibilities of history and reminds me to be open-minded.
Book Review: "Three may keep a secret. . . ."
Summary: 2 Stars
The Da Vinci Code begins with an engrossing prologue that sets up all the elements of a swashbuckling mystery thriller, but the book deteriorates immediately afterwards. Despite the interesting subject matter, author Dan Brown flounders at writing suspense and creates characters too stale and clichéd to carry the story forward in an engaging way. Following the successful opener, Brown begins the action with a corny formal introduction to his protagonist, Robert Langdon, a debonair academic recycled from an earlier novel whom Brown clearly plans to parlay into a franchise of future bestsellers. Brown isn't sure how to characterize Langdon or the supporting cast and prefers to typecast, simply namedropping the Hollywood leading man he imagines playing his hero in the movie adaptation. (Hint: it's no coincidence that Langdon seems a crude knockoff of Indiana Jones, minus the gritty personality and rugged wardrobe which make the latter interesting.)None of the book's literary flaws are as grating, however, as the dialogue, which Brown renders so clumsily that it reminded me of nothing so much as a story submitted in college creative writing by one of the dimmer bulbs in the class. Readers will quite literally cringe during most dialogue and especially during two flashback scenes whose inclusion in the book is downright perplexing, one in which Langdon lectures college students on pagan sex (or something) and another in which Langdon visits a prison to conduct an advanced seminar on Leonardo Da Vinci with the hardened inmates. The words Brown puts in their mouths positively fail the laugh test. Let's just say Brown is quite clearly not a dutiful researcher of the relevant vernacular. These scenes thankfully end quickly, but the awkwardly constructed dialogue between Langdon and the female lead is relentless, inducing Richter-scale cringing at the mere contemplation of the inevitable sex scene (which Brown mercifully leaves to the imagination but which shall certainly figure more prominently in the movie, should one be made).
Yet the dialogue is for the most part not at all flirtatious and is most frustrating when written in the same formal narrative tone as a history textbook. This is the device Brown uses whenever he must give readers some background on Da Vinci or early Christianity. Rather like the know-it-all scientist figure in every Michael Crichton novel, Langdon or another character appears periodically to succor readers with dry soliloquies that also serve as the Cliffs Notes to the stale revelations of the upcoming chapter. Despite the bad writing and deus-ex-machina quality of these diversions, some are actually fairly interesting and probably the only motivation available to actually finish the book, since the "suspense" is largely illusory. Each of the numerous plot twists is predictable fifty to a hundred or more pages in advance, so much so that it would be hard to identify which developments Brown intended to be surprises but for his narrative intervention: Brown kindly informs us that a character is "stunned" or "speechless" whenever he unleashes such impotent bombshells, apparently to compensate for his failure to arouse these emotions in readers.
Worse still, when one looks to the supposed mystery at the heart of the novel, one realizes that "there is no there there." So much of the mystery unravels from the characters talking to one another -- and so little from their actually doing anything -- that by the end it seems the book would not have been substantially different if Langdon had simply stayed in his hotel room and conducted a lecture into a Dictaphone. Most of the lectures concern the secret society bearing the ominous appellation "The Priory of Sion," but if the plot has any credibility the Priory utterly failed to keep anything secret, since every character knows all there is to know about it (and constantly tells us). That's adequate if one approaches The Da Vinci Code as a fictionalized historical essay, for whatever that's worth, but as a suspense novel it fails. By the end Brown has little to reveal that he hasn't already told us, and the suspense concludes not with a bang but a whimper.
Book Review: .....from Oprah to the beach, skipping the seminary
Summary: 3 Stars
Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code is an entertaining page-turner that deserves its blip on the pop culture radar screen .The novel's atmospheric foci on either side of the Channel, starting in the cultural heart of Paris, the Louvre, and moving to London's Westminster Cathedral, are so well portrayed that even the ancient scents of both iconic places seem to rise from the pages. In this regard, Brown's book has that added content layering of a quality tour replete with historical and cultural tidbits imbedded along the way. The most innovative inclusion in this particular narrative is Brown's use of GPS locaters, broadband connectivity, and cell phones - all of which, when one thinks of it, would have undone many of the great mysteries of our lives, both real and fictional.
As for the overwrought defenders of the orthodox church, they must be reminded that this is, after all, a work of fiction, a mystery. Period.
Overall, a thoughtful and instructive adventure, a three-word combo rarely appearing together.
Book Review: 1 in 3 ppl is a christian and he's in for a shock !!!
Summary: 5 Stars
It was the rage of the past several months so I had to check this out. It is a great book of fiction, fast paced with a lot of intrigue and mystery. The main reason it is so powerfull a book is because of it's earth shattering conspiracy, bigger and more incredible than any conpiracy theory ever made. It questions the legitimacy/credibility rocking the base of a religion which is practised by almost 1 in 3 people in the world - The world is 33% christians. (19 % muslims,13 % hindus,chinese 6 % , buddhist 6% , 2.5 % athiest ...etc). Ofcourse as of now it is fiction, but well researched stuff ranging from documents to da vinci paintings. Locales are world famous meuseums,monuments and landmarks, its almost a bus tour of france packaged with some intellectual documenatary (discovery channel) kind of sections spoken by the characters through which the author unwraps the "The worlds best kept lie". Offcourse the theme of the book it seems has been the research of a large no of ppl who have written a large number of books on this topic. But Dan Brown here has been a bestseller because he has fictionalised the whole thing which kind of made it more approchable as a light read for someone wanting to read a good yarn but in the process got hooked onto something bigger. As Mr Dan Brown says this novel may open the door for most readers into a journey of exploration leading to other serious non-fiction books on the same premise but neverthless which are actually serious treatises and researches on the topic dealt with in this book. Nothing wrong with that and its a damn good read. The pages zip past you.Thumbs up !!!