Angels & Demons

Wow! This was a good book. The main character is the same Robert Langdon from the Da Vinci Code, but this was actually the prior novel. So this is Robert Langdon’s so-called “first adventure”. Robert Langdon, being the world-renowned symbologist that he is, is called to a scientific research facility in Sweden to judge the authenticity of an ambigram branded to the chest of a murdered scientist. What he finds is startling. The branded word, Illuminati, is not only authentic but the ancient secret brotherhood is apparently still around and very active today. Their plot is to destroy Vatican City and Catholicism altogether in the name of science with a newly discovered weapon of mass destruction. Langdon and the murdered scientists’ daughter head to Rome to try and save the Vatican.

The story certainly has an Indiana Jones flare, with all the ancient ruins that are searched. The story moves along at a nice, steady pace……..keeping the reader’s interest in tact. Many plot twists that will keep you guessing till the end. Several times, I thought I had the story figured out only to find a new twist that threw my whole theory aside. All the shifting of the story line is a crescendo that slowly builds to a strong ending.



Deception Point

When a NASA satellite discovers an astonishingly rare object buried deep in the Arctic ice, the floundering space agency proclaims a much-needed victory -- a victory with profound implications for NASA policy and the impending presidential election. To verify the authenticity of the find, the White House calls upon the skills of intelligence analyst Rachel Sexton. Accompanied by a team of experts, including the charismatic scholar Michael Tolland, Rachel travels to the Arctic and uncovers the unthinkable: evidence of scientific trickery -- a bold deception that threatens to plunge the world into controversy.



Digital Fortress



Da Vinci Code

Fictional character Robert Langdon is a professor with Havard university, an expert in symbology, a study that Brown invent some time back. Langdon got involved in the death of Sophie Neveu’s grandfather, a museum curator. Neveu and Langdon then set out to find out who killed Neveu’s grandfather only to discover nothing less than the greatest conspiracy the world would ever see.

The style of writing is similar to Angels & Demons - captivating till the last page, lots of history, lots of exageration with history and trying to make Robert Langdon the second smartest man alive, first is Brown himself of course. Unfortunately, the very attempts to boost Langdon’s character intelligence in the book didn’t quite work for me. I cringed on each moment Brown tries to make Langdon smart.

A typical sentence would be like - Most people believe so and so, but experts in the field all know that blah blah blah. No points for figuring out the expert is Robert Langdon himself. It just occurs too many times, till I feel kinda stupid at times. The suspense is still there. I have to admit that that book is one of those I read fastest. I keep wanting to find out what happen next.