Aug 31, 2006 05:34 PM
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Where do I begin? With Robert Langdon, a professor of religious symbology, being woken up at midnight by an unwanted telephone call? But then one might think I was talking about 'The da Vinci Code', mightn't one? And one would be right there - the plot of 'Angels and Demons' has a great many parallels with that of 'The da Vinci Code'. Of course, Dan Brown can't be accused of plagiarizing his own material, can he? Well...
The very beginning of 'Angels and Demons' is almost the same as that of Dan Brown's later novel. Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor, is woken up at midnight by a telephone call - a very urgent one, from a research laboratory in Switzerland. Leonardo Vetra, a scientist at the laboratory, had been found brutally murdered - and his murderers seemed tohave taken pleasure in telling the world who they were: he was branded on the chest. Robert concluded that it was the work of the Illuminati, an ancient anti-Catholic brotherhood believed extinct by historian everywhere. He was flown to the laboratory from hs home in the USA. There he joined forces with Vittoria Vetra, Leonardo's daughter, who found that one of her father's revolutionary discoveries had disappeared. Far away, in the Vatican, the security guards found that one of their cameras had been relocated, and was showing them what seemed to be a time bomb.
Robert and Vittoria were flown to the Vatican.There, because of a mysterious phone call, they came to know that Leonardo Vetra's was not to be the only death that day...
As the time on the bomb ticked away, Robert and Vittoria found themselves on an ancient pilgrimage to the Illuminati headquarters of old. Would they be able to prevent more killings - and find the bomb in time?
I like this book because of its gripping, agonizing suspense - I couldn't put it down for a minute while reading it. Dan Brown's clever twists and turns are purely exhilarating, and he makes his readers feel they're on the spot, watching everything happen. The Catholic Church may feel that Dan Brown is a 'demon' guilty of blasphemy, but his words seem to flow from the pen of an angel - and one is glued to every page.
