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Book Review of Angels & Demons (Robert Langdon, Bk 1)

Angels & Demons (Robert Langdon, Bk 1)
reviewed on + 254 more book reviews


Overall my reaction is "eh, so it goes". The book seemed to just follow the sleuth as he gets drug around rather than him actually being an active involvement. Look, here's a symbol. Look, here's a body. Look, look, here's a great big pointer! The red herring was reasonably well done (though overdone a bit, as well. I like having things stacked against the wrong character, I don't like having them so shoved at me and the real bad guys hidden quite so well--the point it bothered me was the actions of some of the guards), and I didn't figure out who the bad guy was until late. On the other hand, the hero basically had to have the bad guy handed to him before he figured it out either.

I know it isn't a mystery, it's a thriller, but I still felt the story took place in spite of the main character, which made it harder to be drawn in. He needs more active involvement and less "Oh! Look! I will solve a generations old mystery! In five minutes despite working on it for years!"

Not bad, not great. I also didn't really like the ending with the female lead after looking at the description of The Da Vinci Code and finding it has a different female lead. Not that I'm surprised, but I find it unneeded and irrelevant to the story.