Angels & Demons by Dan Brown

Title: Angels and Demons

Author: Dan Brown (American, 1964- )
Originally published: 2000

Page count: 620

Dates read: 9/30/24-10/28/24

2024 book goal progress: 22 out of 24

Read my other book reviews for my 2024 goals HERE.



Description on back of book:
CERN Institute, Switzerland: a world-renowned scientist is found murdered with a mysterious symbol seared onto his chest.

The Vatican, Rome: the College of Cardinals assembles to elect a new pope. Somewhere beneath them, an unstoppable bomb of terrifying power relentlessly counts down to oblivion.

In a breathtaking race against time, Harvard professor Robert Langdon must decipher a labyrinth trail of ancient symbols if he is to defeat those responsible - the Illuminati - a secret brotherhood presumed extinct for nearly four hundred years, reborn to continue their deadly vendetta against their most hated enemy, the Catholic church.

First sentence:
"Physicist Leonardo Vetra smelled burning flesh, and he knew it was his own."

Favorite quotes:
"Langdon's eyes were locked on the brand. Illuminati, he read over and over. His work had always been based on the symbolic equivalent of fossils - ancient documents and historical hearsay - but this image before him was today. Present tense. He felt like a paleontologist coming face to face with a living dinosaur."

"The most dangerous enemy is that which no one fears."

" 'The Illuminati brotherhood held that the superstitious dogma spewed forth by the church was mankind's greatest enemy. They fear that if religion continued to promote pious myth as absolute fact, scientific progress would halt, and mankind would be doomed to an ignorant future of senseless holy wars. Much like we see today.'

Langdon frowned, he was right. Holy wars were still making headlines. My God is better than your God. It seemed there was always a close correlation between true believers and high body counts."

"Galileo was an Illuminatus. And he was also a devout Catholic. He tried to soften the church's position on science by proclaiming that science did not undermine the existence of God, but rather reinforced it... He held that science and religion were not enemies, but rather allies - two different languages telling the same story, a story of symmetry and balance... heaven and hell, night and day, hot and cold, God and Satan. Both science and religion rejoiced in God's symmetry... the endless contest of light and dark."

"Very little in any organized faith is original. Religions are not born from scratch. They grow from one another. Modern religion is a collage... an assimilated historical record of man's quest to understand the divine."

"Sometimes divine revelation simply means adjusting your brain to hear what your heart already knows."

CAWPILE Rating: Overall - 8.6/10 - ⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
Characters      - 9
Atmosphere   - 9
Writing Style - 7
Plot                - 9
Intrigue          - 10
Logic             - 7
Enjoyment     - 9
What is a CAWPILE Rating?

Review:

I enjoyed this book! I have not read or watched anything in this series, so it was all a surprise to me. I can't say too much without giving things away, but I was swept up hook, line, and sinker. It was fun to learn about the secret society of the Illuminati. It was fun to try to solve the crazy mystery all over the Vatican. I had my suspicions for a while, but I couldn't figure out the motive. It's a good ending overall, but a sad one for one of my favorite characters. 

There were two significant logical errors that could've been worked out better. The first 200-or-so pages and the last 70ish pages seemed to drag on forever - those should've been summed up MUCH more succinctly. The two media people were very annoying and felt unneeded. But other than those issues, the book was really good overall.

Movie Review:

The book Angels and Demons was written and set before the book Da Vinci Code - though the movies were made in reverse. I watched Angels and Demons first because of the order of the books, and my partner said it didn't reveal anything about the Da Vinci Code. I think the movie was good overall, but it glossed over many things - which was expected due to the size of the book. 

I have mixed feelings about many of the changes. I liked some of the changes better than the book, such as Langden's gift at the end. Others I didn't like as much, such as how different the elector and h/assain were - though I liked how they ended, they were very different from the book. Richter was a combination of two characters in the book. Many lines were direct quotes from the book, though said by different characters. It was a good movie, but the book is definitely worth the read due to how many details were lost in the film.

Now I'm off to read another book... but since a review should be more about the author of the book than about the writer of the blog, I will let Dan Brown have the last words:

(This is a long quote between Vittoria and Robert, which is shortened in the movie and with the Camerlengo instead of Vittoria.)

"Vittoria was watching him. 'Do you believe in God Mr. Langdon?'

The question startled him... 'I want to believe,' he heard himself say... 'but it's not that easy. Having faith requires leaps of faith, cerebral acceptance of miracles - immaculate conceptions and divine interventions. And then there are the codes of conduct. The Bible, the Koran, Buddhist scripture... they all carry similar requirements - and similar penalties. They claim that if I don't live by a specific code, I will go to hell. I can't imagine a God would rule that way.'

'...I did not ask if you believe what man says about God. I asked if you believe in God. There is a difference. Holy scripture is stories... legends and history of man's quest to understand his own need for meaning. I am not asking you to pass judgment on literature. I am asking if you believe in God. When you lie out under the stars, do you sense the divine? Do you feel in your gut that you are staring up at the work of God's hand?'

Langdon took a long moment to consider it... 'As a scientist and the daughter of a Catholic priest, what do you think of religion?'

Vittoria paused, brushing a lock of hair from her eyes. 'Religion is like language or dress. We gravitate toward the practices with which we were raised. In the end, though, we are all proclaiming the same thing. That life has meaning. That we are grateful for the power that created us... Faith is universal. Our specific methods for understanding it are arbitrary. Some of us pray to Jesus, some of us go to Mecca, and some of us study subatomic particles. In the end, we are all just searching for truth, that which is greater than ourselves. '

Langdon wished he could express himself so clearly. 'And God?' he asked. 'Do you believe in God?'

Vittoria was silent for a long time. 'Science tells me God must exist. My mind tells me I will never understand God. My heart tells me I am not meant to.' "