Hardcover, 454 pages
English language
Published March 18, 2003 by Doubleday.
While in Paris on business, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon receives an urgent late-night phone call. The elderly curator of the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum, a baffling cipher found near the body. As Langdon and a gifted French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu, sort through the bizarre riddles, they are stunned to discover a trail of clues hidden in the works of Da Vinci—clues visible for all to see and yet ingeniously disguised by the painter.
The stakes are raised when Langdon uncovers a startling link: The late curator was involved in the Priory of Sion—an actual secret society whose members included Sir Isaac Newton, Botticelli, Victor Hugo, and Da Vinci, among others. Langdon suspects they are on the hunt for a breathtaking historical secret, one that has proven through the centuries to be as enlightening as it is dangerous. In a frantic race through Paris, and beyond, Langdon and …
While in Paris on business, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon receives an urgent late-night phone call. The elderly curator of the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum, a baffling cipher found near the body. As Langdon and a gifted French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu, sort through the bizarre riddles, they are stunned to discover a trail of clues hidden in the works of Da Vinci—clues visible for all to see and yet ingeniously disguised by the painter.
The stakes are raised when Langdon uncovers a startling link: The late curator was involved in the Priory of Sion—an actual secret society whose members included Sir Isaac Newton, Botticelli, Victor Hugo, and Da Vinci, among others. Langdon suspects they are on the hunt for a breathtaking historical secret, one that has proven through the centuries to be as enlightening as it is dangerous. In a frantic race through Paris, and beyond, Langdon and Neveu find themselves matching wits with a faceless powerbroker who appears to anticipate their every move. Unless they can decipher the labyrinthine puzzle, the Priory’s secret—and an explosive ancient truth—will be lost forever. --front flap
regardless of its pseudo-intellectualism, it kept me on the edge well enough for it to count as a 4 star book
Good, but I kind of ran out of gas at the end. The best part of this book was seeing how much better a writer Dan Brown has become since his earlier and weaker book DIGITAL FORTRESS.
Great fun
Whether you have any belief in the central precepts of the story or not, it's a cracking good read. And it's an easy read too. Thoroughly enjoyable.
A must read. An immense piece of historical fiction. Has a few plot twists here and there. I like the writing style which has a feel good factor and easy to read kinda vibe to it.
Is the human race getting dumber? Or is it just the literary establishment? *
I picked up a mint-condition hardcover copy of The Da Vinci Code at my local public library's permanent book sale for $1. At that price, I couldn't lose; I was going on a six-hour drive with my wife, and I needed something to read. My one concern was that the book might be too complex to be a relaxing car read. After all, according to the blurbs on the cover the New York Times said it was a work of "genius"!
It's not. It's a fairly fast-paced and somewhat over-talky action/mystery/conspiracy theory novel; a potboiler, really. I was surprised by several aspects of the novel.
The writing actually betrayed a slightly juvenile touch. No offense to Mr. Brown; he's a competent writer. But standards seem to have gone down in the last twenty years or so. …
Is the human race getting dumber? Or is it just the literary establishment? *
I picked up a mint-condition hardcover copy of The Da Vinci Code at my local public library's permanent book sale for $1. At that price, I couldn't lose; I was going on a six-hour drive with my wife, and I needed something to read. My one concern was that the book might be too complex to be a relaxing car read. After all, according to the blurbs on the cover the New York Times said it was a work of "genius"!
It's not. It's a fairly fast-paced and somewhat over-talky action/mystery/conspiracy theory novel; a potboiler, really. I was surprised by several aspects of the novel.
The writing actually betrayed a slightly juvenile touch. No offense to Mr. Brown; he's a competent writer. But standards seem to have gone down in the last twenty years or so. Back in the early 1980s I ended up reading a number of best-sellers. Several of them went on to become some of my favorite books: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Shogun, Marathon Man. All of these were much better-written than The Da Vinci Code, and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy in particular was far and away more intelligent (and so was Shogun, for the matter!
Not to mention authors like Frank Herbert and Roger Zelazny. Their works require real thought on the part of the reader. Not so The Da Vinci Code. It's a decent potboiler with some mildly interesting secret-society conspiracy theory stuff, but even that is hardly anything new to anyone who has done even a little light reading on the topic.
On the plus side, at least Mr. Brown didn't get too disgusting. At one point I was afraid he'd pull a Wingrove or Chalker on me, with secret cult ceremonies that might turn out to be truly disturbing. Instead, the ceremony was hardly anything new; in fact, it couldn't have been older.
The characters were rather flat. The plot was a series of wham-bam escapes and secret-society deductions; the pace keeps moving along well enough, but the story becomes a bit repetitive and predictable. It was a decent time-killer (and I got an extra fillip from the odd coincidence that the hotel I stayed at while finishing the book was hosting a Knights of Columbus event, in full regalia), but it wasn't really memorable.
I'll probably give Brown another try, but only because I run out of reading material so quickly. I have to wonder, though: are all of these supposedly "brilliant" modern best-sellers so simplistic and unchallenging? I'd thought that the Left Behind series was unbelievably stupid, but now I'm starting to suspect that it's merely sub-par!
Recht lustig, wenn man gerade keinen hohen Ansprüche an die Unterhaltung hat. Zum großen Teil sehr an den Haaren herbeigezogen.
I'll give it a 3 because it kept my attention.
Après l’avoir lu j’avoue ne pas comprendre le scandale provoqué par ce livre.
Rien n’est à prendre au premier degrés, surtout pas le côté “historique”, truffé d’erreurs monumentales. Le suspens est haletant, l’ensemble coule tout seul, si on ne prend pas le temps d’analyser les invraisemblances.
Lecture facile et rapide, qui n’a pas d’autre prétention que celle de distraire.
On peut par la suite avoir envie d’en savoir plus sur les thèmes évoqués par l’auteur, mais ne comptez pas sur le livre pour vous faire des révélations sérieuses.
There's not much to say about this book since it seems that everyone and their mother has read it. I borrowed it from a friend because there was nothing else to read at the time (I was on a train). I didn't want to like it at first but I was sucked in. I ended up reading it all in a day and couldn't put it down to the detriment of reading for class. Granted, it wasn't the most sophisticated writing in the world and I did manage to figure out a number of the riddles and plot twists ahead of time, and many of his theories seemed contrived and stretching.
