Book Review: Angels and Demons by Dan Brown

Synopsis: Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is called in to consult on the (apparently ritualistic) murder of a scientist in Switzerland. He then finds himself thrust into the middle of a scheme to steal a half gram of antimatter, kill members of the Catholic College of Cardinals, and vaporize the Vatican.

What can I say about Dan Brown? I'm floored by his popularity. Even before I learned the craft of writing, I wouldn't have liked anything he writes. Yes, they are all high-tension edge-of-your-seat thrillers, but all of the tension in them relies on tricks such as holding back information, unrealistic conflict-for-the-sake-of-conflict, and characters who must have IQs in the low fifties (side note: average IQ is defined as 100).

The best thing I can say (and I don't mean this as an ad hominum attack, it's simply the only way I can explain what works) is that Dan Brown is a man of average intelligence writing puzzle thrillers involving a genius character. The downside is that you can't write a puzzle above your intelligence level, so in order to make the puzzle work, he has to make all of his characters stupid.

For instance: the Italian scientist raised by a Catholic priest who after a short talk about the Catholic church sees her boss on the phone with someone important. Her boss says, "Go to Rome." When asked who was on the phone, her boss--who is going into acute repiratory failure--chokes out "The Swiss--". And she turns to Langdon and says, "What do the Swiss have to do with Rome?" (In case anyone reading this thinks that's a good question: Welcome. Please stay a while and enjoy the fount of knowledge that is the internet. And the Pope, who lives in Rome, is guarded by an elite group of famous--if only for their uniforms--soldiers called the Swiss Guard.) That question is almost as bad as 90% of the people in the book having never heard of the Illuminati, and Langdon being surprised when anyone but him knows about them.

The entire book is filled with plot holes, awkward characterization (you can guess the entire climax of the book just by reading the couple paragraph sidebars that accompany the introduction of each new character and deliniate their esoteric skill sets), stupid puzzles that aren't puzzles, and bad science. I mean, BAD science. There's a point where they're talking about the murdered scientist and how he created matter from nothing (ex nihilo) in violation of the laws of physics. All he needed was a huge supply of energy. That's not creation ex nihilo. That's creation of matter from a huge supply of energy. It doesn't violate any laws--it just runs E=mc^2 backward. An accomplishment in itself, but nothing revelatory. The science goes down hill from there. I won't go into specific detail, you'll have to read it and be angry yourself. Really, Dan Brown needs to do his research better, or at least bounce ideas off someone who knows anything.

And at the end Langdon just stands around while everything resolves itself. Yes, he set the ending into motion, but he didn't even need to be present for the last eighth of the book.