Robert Langdon, a renowned scholar in religious symbology, is in Paris to meet with the curator of the Louvre Museum. On the night they are to meet, the curator is killed, and along with the curator's granddaughter, Sophie, Langdon is thrown into a race to find the answers to the curator's death and the riddles he left behind, riddles that include the Holy Grail and the secret society charged with protecting it.
Impression: While the story itself is fine, I'm not getting why the books was such a phenomenon. It could have been cut by at least 100 pages just by cutting unnecessary and boring flashbacks, science babble that most readers probably don't care about and maybe found their eyes glazing over at, and unnecessary words and repetitions. And there were a lot of unnecessary words and repetitions. All of this bogged the story down. I ended up skimming far more often than I like to when reading.
But when you take out all that excess verbiage, the story itself is fine. I did (and still do) have some skepticism over a number of the points made by characters in the story, but my belief in their ideology wasn't necessary to enjoy the story itself. The characters seemed fairly well rounded, though I would have liked less head-hopping so I could actually get to know them better. I don't usually have a problem with changing point of view characters, but it happened way too frequently in this book, and often at points where it was pointless—it didn't add anything to the story and didn't give any real character development.
Even with those problems, the story action was fairly believable, and the description and setting details were enough to bring the reader in. as long as a reader doesn’t buy into all the hype (and thus get disappointed when reading) or expect the movie's excitement and conciseness, it's an okay read. Not spectacular, but not bad.
Unless otherwise noted, all books reviewed have been purchased by me.
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I will no longer be linking to Amazon and no longer recommending Amazon as a place to purchase books I review. Amazon has repeatedly used bully tactics to reinforce its policies, even if those tactics cause harm to authors or limit customer choices. Amazon usually apologizes for the events after the fact, but that they continue to use the same methods makes those apologies hollow. I will not purchase from or encourage others to purchase from a business that chooses to take from the pockets of authors (who as a whole earn a lot less than general public realizes) and decide what the public should and should not read.
