-Thrillers Can Entertain and be Redundant-Not everyone can craft a masterpiece their first time out. Just ask William Shakespeare. His debut work, Titus Andronicus is so bad people argue that it didn’t come out from his camp while others say it shows his style, work, and everything else that would later develop.
I’m from the latter camp. He wrote it, and it really isn’t as bad as critics say-just violent. Very violent and the characters lack any depth at all. The point is though, it certainly doesn’t hold up to his later work which shows why he’s the greatest writer of all time. Bill obviously developed as time went on and when we got the masterpieces of Macbeth and Hamlet. As bad as some people may think Titus is, it certainly shows potential from a young writer, which any critic can be quick to point out, and if he’s seasoned the pay off for supporting him will be worth it.
Dan Brown is very similar today in that category. Contrary to what many may think, he wrote two books before DaVinci Code hit and it shows they were his first…two…books. Laden with plot holes and boring prose, without even reading the DaVinci Code I can tell a lot of what works in that novel came from him finding what didn’t work in these novels. Angels in Demons is his second attempt at the Great American Novel. It aint bad, but when you’re an arrogant snob like me that knows plots pretty well-it’s easily predictable.
It didn’t exactly sell well either. This being Brown’s sophomore release, it sold in the realm of 10,000 copies (mere peanuts in the industry) until DaVinci Code spring boarded it’s sales into more respectable numbers.
Angels and Demons doesn’t really have anything original with its plot devices. It’s mostly about another mad man trying to blow up another large area of land, and the conspiracy said mad man works with. We’ve seen it before, we know how it ends, but this time the setting isn’t a gathering of leaders at a U.N. Summit or The Pentagon. No, Brown reaches down, grabs his balls and sets the story in Vatican, Rome-headquarters of the Catholic religion.
It’s not just the Catholics this place has either, Rome has over 2,000 years of Christian history in its archives and hundreds of ancient sculptures and chapels within. For one guy to say he’s going to blow it up could easily erase half of mankind’s relationship with God-and that’s where the story is praised. It’s not like it’s just a battle of good and evil either, the Vatican has probably the most dysfunctional group of cardinals and guards that one has to wonder how the Pope ever ran the place to begin with. And yes, all of those guards, cardinals and whoever find themselves caught into the conspiracy plot somewhere along the way.
Most of it is because of the Illuminati. A group of cultists who pointed out how the church was full of shit and science proved everything. In retaliation, the church killed a few of their members and branded them with iron to wash away their sins. It’s implied the great scientist Galileo was part of this group before it became bloodthirsty, as well as others. The Illuminati have been esoteric for quite awhile, so long that everyone thinks they no longer exist, that is till they hold the Vatican hostage with a canister of Anti-matter. A Macguffin used to blow up the entire city. So how do you find the canister? How do you stop this group of people who pointed out the church was full of shit?
Enter Robert Langdon in his first book to make sense of everything—and it’s very clear since he’s sane that he’s not welcome in the city. From there, Langdon needs to find these Illuminati chaps, get the canister, save the girl, and get ready for his NY Times smash-hit sequel.
CHARACTERS:This is the one thing Brown really needs to iron out. He has great character archetypes, but they are all 2D. I’m yet to see any of them learn a moral, or grow by the end of the story, but then again I’ve only read AaD. At least they aren’t annoying by any means, most of them are just cookie cutter protagonists and antagonists that move the overall story (which is the novel’s main emphasis). I won’t complain though, these guys get the job done.
PROTAGONIST
Robert Langdon:A Harvard Symbologist who has written a book about those Illuminati fellas. Langdon is an extremely bright professor who loves his job, his life, and generally enjoys finding new information on his research. When the events of the book get moving, it’s stated Langdon was trying to get into the Vatican Archives to do research but has been denied (it’s difficult to get in there no matter who you are, FYI).
Langdon’s intelligence though is what turns off some. He has an answer for everything. He can’t find a clue-then off the corner of his eye is a document, a statue, a certain church made by a certain somebody. He’s in the open, what now? That’s it! There’s a chapel that holds the key!
For someone to find and join the Illuminati, they had to decipher a series of clues that lead to their church within Rome., which happens to be the main objective through most of the book. I can only guess it took them days, weeks, months, and for some years to find this church. For Langdon, it only takes a matter of hours. And I can bet you some of these guys are smarter than even Bob Langdon here.
The other problem with Langdon is that he really has no problems or flaws so to speak (essential for the best characters of fiction IMHO). He’s that perfect. The only thing I can think of is that he’s still a bachelor in his late age, but then again that makes me think of him as a pimp, and since he’s also a badass swimmer who plays a mean game of water polo, that assumption is almost entirely accurate. With the exception of getting bruised up towards the end in the finale against his antagonist and passing out in a coffin (which was done to avoid getting burnt up in the middle of a widespread fire) Langdon comes out of every situation unscathed.
My assumptions are more correct when I find that this guy was meant to be the man “Dan Brown wishes he could be.” So in essence, you’re reading a story with Dan Brown as the main character. There’s nothing wrong with that, half of the stories have the author as the main character even if you don’t realize it. But it’s obvious Dan Brown is Langdon, they were born the same day, went to the same school. It’s like Brown said. “I’m going to take the stuff in my life that sucks, and make sure it isn’t going to be implemented in Langdon. Then I’m going to take all the stuff I wish I was good at or interest me, and make Langdon be a god at all of it.”
Not bad, just shallow.
The Angel: Langdon is basically a throwback to Superman comics of the 1960s. He has nothing wrong with him and is always nice to the people who are nice to him. He can get out of trouble at any time, he does the right thing, always, and is there to save the day. For that reason, there is little to not like about Langdon, the person. There is much to not like about the character-but that’s all digging deeper into the context. For the protagonist of a plot driven story, Langdon gets the job done. At least we don’t hate him. If, unfortunately, you do hate him, I suggest going to a psychiatrist because you got some serious fucking problems.
The Demon: Langdon has no demons to speak of. Well, unless you count that stupid Mickey Mouse watch he has. I believe the book says he got it at a young age, but I don’t know of watches with Mickey’s arms showing the time that are equipped with alarms. You think Disney would make something that advanced in the 60s or 70s when Langdon was a child? Let alone one without a price tag Disneyland merch would get? I thought the watch was cool, until Langdon passes out in a coffin and sets the alarm to get the authorities to find him and save his life.
That’s when I was like “How does that have an alarm?” Leave it to Langdon, sure…but It feels like Brown was stuck in a scene and thought of the alarm as a quick fix.
There is also a flashback of Langdon as a child falling down a dark well which apparently is supposed to resonate he’s claustrophobic of sorts. But when writing that character flaw, Dan Brown forgot that Langdon is supposed to be flawless, so that plot piece is never heard from again.
Speaking of that well, was I the only one who found it to be a total rip-off of every Batman movie showing The Dark Knight’s origin? I mean I was waiting for Langdon to run out of the hospital and head to the Bat-Cave to figure some of this shit out after I read the scene.
Television Equivalent: MacGyver, but better at cracking puzzles than making handy gizmos.
CERN:
The European Organization for Nuclear Research. Cern’s purpose is to throw a Macguffin into the mix in the form of Anti-matter. It’s ran by Maximilian Kohler and lays claim to having invented such toys as the internet (take that American History!). I’m not sure what’s true or not from this group of nerds, but their latest invention-a canister of anti-matter- is stolen. Anti-matter can basically make a blast larger than a hydrogen bomb in a canister roughly the size of a venti starbucks cup. So obviously a murder happens and the bad guys get the weapon…uh-oh.
Maximilian Kohler: The DIRECTOR (caps provided by me) of CERN. Kohler is an arrogant jackass who seems to enjoy a condescending behavior towards everyone else. The guy is allegedly brilliant, though he’s confined to wheelchair and gave me the appearance he’d croak any day. Apparently he’s not a very popular boss as most of his employees fear him and try to avoid him whenever possible. He’s always quick to flaunt his toys, even putting Langdon into a Jet that can get him over to CERN headquarters quicker than any commercial jet. From there is a nice walk around the complex with The DIRECTOR showing a CERN of happy and cheery coworkers.
That is until Langdon finds the body and the missing eye of Leo Vetra.
Kohler is quite dedicated to his work; the guy preserves the corpse of a murdered coworker REFUSING to let INTERPOL or any sort of police in to investigate (for fear of top secret projects being uncovered, let alone Anti-Matter). Instead he finds and calls Robert Langdon (how, only one could guess) and starts him on his quest.
Kohler later is the one who uncovers The Illuminati’s plot to kill the pope and do all the evil things thus setting off to Rome to confront the man known as Janus (who is actually the Carlmengo). We, the readers are left to think that Kohler was, in fact, the mastermind of everything, but with 30 pages left, Langdon uncovers forty subplots, one of which reveals Kohler as a good guy.
The Angel: Kohler appears as a nice enough chap with a huge problem involving nuclear bombs and The Illuminati. While his intentions seem sincere, albeit wacky (why aren’t you going to let the fucking police in to start an investigation if you’re innocent…which you are), there’s no denying that this vegetable has made significant strides in science.
The Demon: Kohler really doesn’t do anything but provide another suspect in the whole “Whodunit” case on getting this wacky day going. For fucks sake man, just give us two more pages so we know you’re a good guy. By the time we find out Kohler really was on Langdon’s side the whole time, our head is spinning with Pope children, chopper evacuations with help from God, and a million other strange ass things.
TV Equivalent: X-Men: The animated series’ Professor X 
Vittoria Vetra: Adopted daughter of the late Leonardo Vetra, a scientist/Catholic priest who gets murdered to start the first story arc of the book. Leo designed Anti-matter and researched science for the better of religion (huh?!) which was what led to his death. Vittoria shows up in CERN to take the role of Langdon’s side kick (read: love interest and damsel in distress).
For the damsel, Vittoria really doesn’t need much taking care of. She’s as tough as they come. In fact, I’d say she’s a polar opposite of Langdon’s thinking process. Langdon thinks things through, Vittoria just darts after the first thing that pops in her mind. She gets the first firearm in the book, and is hell-bent on finding her father’s killer. Her rough mouth though, gets everyone into trouble on more than one occasion as she really isn’t down for idle chit-chat and always has to get things done.
That said, she is still the damsel. By the fourth quarter of the book, the tough, non-thinker, more doer girl that was a joy to read gets abducted, strapped to a table for non-consensual sex purposes, and continually thinks of Robert Langdon rescuing her. By the time you get to scenes from her point of view, you’re gagging about it because she wants her hero, even if she’s not saying those exact words.
The Angel: Vittoria has a strong sense of justice and is willing to put her life on the line to find more information. While this also gets her into trouble a few times, it’s a joy to read. Well, until she reverts to “SAVE ME ROBERT!”.
The Demon: If Langdon can’t get out of something-Vittoria can. When Langdon is stumped on where to go next, Vittoria suggests a sculpture leading them to their next clue. When Langdon fights the badguy who kidnaps Vittoria, at the site of Langdon getting axed, Vittoria dislocates her shoulders to get through the bindings she’s in and causes an assist. Shes’ kinda Langdon’s fallback sensor. When Dan Brown knows Langdon has had the puzzle piece too many times in a row, he lets Vittoria step in and take us to the next area. While it’s refreshing, you gotta laugh at Langdon’s intelligence. Here’s a guy who can find the Illuminati, identify symbols, be a knowledgeable badass through most of the book, but he gets shown up by a labrat who suggests a sculpture by Bernini to get them to the next area.
I’d probably tell her to fuck off out of pride too.
TV Equivalent: Dragonball Z’s Bulma 
The Illuminati:
History says that some people were non too happy with the way Catholicism ran the land and conspired peacefully to point out all the holes in the bible. Naturally, Popes don’t like this, and it gets worse if this is in the Renaissance. Using their power (which was quite a bit back then). They hunted down these “Illuminati,” branded them with hot irons, then left them for dead.
After seeing they weren’t going to get to be a major political party, the Illuminati became entirely esoteric (Galileo being one of it’s better known members). They had a church that took quite a bit of ingenuity to find , hidden within Rome an donly by deciphering a series of clues could you find the church and join your Science loving bretheren.
While the Illuminati are believed to be dead-it’s not good when someone at the start of the book (Leo Vetra) gets his eye stolen and has the Illuminati seal branded on his chest. Those fuckers are back, and they are none too happy with Catholicism standing the test of time.
The Hassassin: AaD’s 2nd tier bad guy. The Hassassin is a throwback to the middle east’s version of Ninjas, and if you played Assassin’s Creed, you’d tend to think they are still around today. Not much is known about him besides the fact he was contacted by a guy named Janus to cause all the trouble AaD is thrust into.
The Hassassin has a simple pattern-kill the four cardinals that are up to become pope by using earth, air, fire and water in that order. For example, he stuffs dirt down one cardinal’s throat, suffocating him to fulfill the earth requirement.
He seems to like his job too, and on the rare phone calls or conversations he has with Langdon, you can tell he enjoys the chase and watching Langdon jump around to him like a cat on dangling yarn.
Of course, we don’t know much about the guy. He’s a contracted killer who made a better antagonist than the book’s final antagonist showdown. His death is premature, in my opinion-and if Langdon was set up as this awesme guy to begin with, we should have had their confrontation at the end. When he dies, the book feels finished for the most part, that is until Dan Brown sneaks in that final plotline that was way better than the entire book.
The big problem is that this guy isn’t that good of a close-range fighter. When I think of ninjas or Hassassins or people like this douche, I think of this guy:
Now call me crazy, but if the Hassassin had a bullet shot into his foot a few hours earlier, and had to fight a college professor before he could rape the juicy Italian brod he strapped to the table, don’t you think he could work through the injury? Aren’t these guys trained to be deadly even if their arms are cut off?
Maybe I’m just thinking about this way too much.
The Angel: There really isn’t anything good about this guy. Much like Vice from Marlowe plays, the Hassassin seems to be doing everything for Illuminati pride and a paycheck.
The Demon: this is one seriously bent dude. The one problem with him is-we never hate him. Yes, he’s doing bad things and needs to be stopped, but we never once get to hate him, or like him for that matter. Kidnapping Vittoria was a good first start, but if he actually raped her or did something to violate her-he’d be on his way and make us more emotionally involved in Langdon kicking his ass. Unfortunately, since this book was predictable, we knew Vittoria would get out before bumping uglies with this guy.
TV Equivalent: The Shredder 
Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca AKA Janus
The boss of The Vatican in The Pope’s absence or something. This is where AaD gets very confusing. I’m never sure who is who through all the Italian names. Double when they speak Italian. Look, if you’re gonna speak Italian, speak it, don’t go in and out of it in the prose. It doesn’t make it more accurate, it just makes it ridiculous. No one is going to care if you have Italian dudes who should speak Latin speaking English. We can suspend disbelief on that.
This guy follows the age-old cliché: If he’s super nice and gets you out of a jam early in the novel, chances are-he’s going to be one of the main badguys at the end of the novel. The moment the Camerlengo gets word of Robert and Vittoria arriving in the Vatican and having good info for the anti-matter crisis, he orders his goons to free them and then acts very warm and kind hearted to the duo. Right there I knew we were going to finda total douchebag when this was over with.
A douchebag he is. This guy is the mastermind of the entire plot AaD is known for. His plan is simple-kill scientists, then make sure everything gets blown up towards the end. There’s also a subplot involving being the pope’s son through artificial insemination (a part I didn’t catch till I read a synopsis).
Where Robert Langdon is the official do-gooder, Camerlengo is the bad dude. He almost does things for the sake of being evil, but does have some motivation. He’s not for the science and God motif AaD preaches and wants science to just disappear. He’s very against science, so against it that when the late pope voiced his like for the anti-matter, Camerlengo poisoned the poor sap.
See, Leonardo Vetra discovered Anti-Matter and researched it to confirm God’s existence. The Pope thought the idea was grand and gave his seal of approval, something the young Carlmenlengo didn’t really like. So he did what anyone would do when someone’s religious beliefs grind against their own with potential to change the very face of power: He goes on a rampage in the name of God. He kills the pope and makes his death look like natural causes, murders Leo Vetra and makes it look like The Illuminati are back, then hires the Hassassin out to execute the cardinals in order to instill the public faith in him.
Camerlengo’s main purpose of everything was to have everyone back him, then put him in as the Pope where he could right the wrongs caused in the last few years. Like any villain-he had good intentions, but had to do some really asshole stuff to get there.
It isn’t until Kohler finds him after reading Vetra’s journal that Camerlengo’s plot goes to fruitation. This guy gets cardinals framed, people killed, and does more dirty work-just to save his own skin. If it wasn’t for Langdon’s curiosity, Camerlengo would have gotten away with the whole thing. His death however ends a few minutes after he’s crowned as pope-getting burnt to a crisp in the middle of the Vatican alters. Yummy.
The Angel: Camerlengo is probably a decent chap deep down. He thinks in his mind he is doing the right thing, but he can’t make an omlette without breaking a few eggs. I do think if no one caught onto his evil deeds when he became pope and everything went unsolved-he’d be a decent, although bitter ruler. Call me crazy, but wipe away his little evil stuff and he would have been a great pope.
The Demon: Langdon may have the answers, but Camerlengo changes the questions. This guy is seriously calculating, to a point I just don’t believe him. I can believe the pope, Vetra, and the antimatter thing. But once we get Kohler involved to make sense of everything, it still goes far too smoothly for me to really buy it. Some priest is able to be a master of human psychology to the point he has a security guard, a master scientist and others killed to make him look like a victim? There’s just too many variables for the kind of person he is. I mean, who the fuck does he think he is? Cade Vanity?
Yes, I went there. I actually compared him to the villain in my own novel: A sadistic, calculating douchebag who also happens to be a perfect clone of Jesus Christ-at least we can believe HIS motives.
Television Equivalent: Inspector Gadget’s Dr. Claw. 
THE VATICAN:Outside of groups and outsiders, we’re left with Vatican employees. I don’t think this building needs an introduction, but it’s a wonder how it’s still standing with these incompetent pricks.
Montieri Olivetti:
Captain of the swiss guard. Olivetti has a rough start with Langdon. How rough a start? Well Olivetti simply imprisons him with Vittoria inside of a vattican office. This is rather humorous considering that Olivetti was the one to call the two to the Vatican in the first place when he found the Anti-Matter canister with CERN’s name slapped on it. If he knew this was going to be bad information (If a camera is focused on a can and you have no clue where the camera is located-that’s probably a good indication), why call them in the first place? What follows is Olivetti looking bitter and assholeish and The Camerlengo looking like a saint. The roles are switched halfway through, and Olivetti gets shot by the Assassin shortly after showing he’s not such a bad guy at all.
Olivetti really didn’t do anything for me, and I kept getting him confused with The Camerlengo. It’s not a major difference, but I think his character could have been developed more than it was. Then again, he serves only a purpose to get shot so who knows.
The Angel: Olivetti is the captain of the guard and a good one at that. He cares about the security of the city, even if he gets a bit rash in doing so.
The Demon: What kind of morons do they have running this place? Who in their right mind finds something belonging to CERN, invites representatives over to get it, then locks them up. You’d think they’d know they aren’t going to like what they are about to hear, and that if representatives were captured-the folks back home are going to blast the news out anyways. And don’t give me that “Panic” bullshit. Olivetti is an idiot.
TV Equivelant: Night Court’s Nostradamus “Bull” Shannon 
Cardinal Saverio Mortati
Boss of the conclave; a college of cardinals used to elect the pope. Mortati is frequently referred to when they have the helluva time selecting who the new pope would be and throughout the story, it’s apparent the cardinals are hopelessly in deadlock. Other than that, he says a few words to The Camerlengo, after everything is revealed. Mostly things about morality and how God is going to strike people with lightning.
The Angel: Cardinal Moriati really doesn’t do anything but be an angel. Through the whole book he’s basically your do-good, “I really have absolutely nothing to do with this storyline”
The Demon: Cardinal Moriati really doesn’t do anything but be an angel. Through the whole book he’s basically your do-good, “I really have absolutely nothing to do with this storyline”
TV Equivalent: Kung Fu: The Legend Continues’ : Kwai Chang Caine (big difference Caine had something to do with Kung Fu’s storylines) 
Gunther Glick and Chinita Macri:
A reporter and a photo journalist partnership looking for a big scoop. For the first half of the book, the Assassin contacts the two sending them to where he plans on killing Cardinals and having them report on the whole thing. From there they basically report on what’s going on with the crazy day in Rome. Eventually Langdon gets ahold of them and uses them to his advantage. To film some good stuff.
The Angel: Everyone loves the press in real life, and in fiction/film everyone seems to find them meddling and troublesome. At least Gunther is just an everyday guy swept into the whole thing.
The Demon: Let’s call these two what they really are: The Paparazzi
Television Equivalent: Pokemon’s Team Rocket 
And Three Clues:
AaD is your normal “Hostage situation, mass death” thriller, set in Rome with the distinction of God having a hand in everything. I can see where people could bag on this book though. It doesn’t have the shock value of DaVinci Code, it doesn’t have the appeal of The Lost Symbol and it doesn’t have any sort of writing passages you’re going to remember.
I’ll take a story any day of the week, if it’s done well and doesn’t have the feel of a big budget action flick. This is where AaD falters-it has those action movie moments, those “Oh yeah right” points where you gotta say “WHAT THE FUCK?!” I got three of them, and these three are enough to point out my disdain with AaD to the point I probably could never see myself re-reading this again.
1: The Assassin is a shitty assassin: I’ll again bring this up, he’s really not a good killer. At all. If he were what he should be-Robert Langdon should still be in a coma right now, Vittoria should still be having counseling for her rape attack and Camerlengo should be blessing America on Easter Sunday.
Have Langdon smart, have him as a swimmer, but he gets boring as a protagonist when he doesn’t get his ass kicked once in awhile, and he doesn’t. He can go toe to toe with a TRAINED killer, even when he shot said killer in the foot of all places. I can suspend disbelief for so long before I get fed up with the feud. This is one coming dangerously close. Had Langden had a mutilated arm, had Langdon took a few bullets and got the stray gun to sway the momentum in his final confrontation with the killer-we would have a villain. But right now, all we have is some guy who grabs four powerless, weak, old farts and kills them in creative ways. Hell, any serial killer could do that.
2: Langdon’s handy man tricks get very old: In any piece of fiction, even those that resemble a sort of plot, we need something out of the main character to give us weakness, vulnerability. Or, at the very least, we need them to be absolutely stumped and hit rock bottom. Even Sherlock Holmes or James Bond find themselves in a fix at some point in their stories. Maybe it’s the short deadline before the bomb, errr anti-matter goes off, or maybe I just nitpick the hell out of Langdon, but the guy just never does anything wrong. It never gets more ridiculous than this plot piece towards the end:
While The Camerlengo is still masquerading as a do-gooder, he finds the canister, hops into a chopper (with Langdon in the co-pilot seat) and ascends to the air. From there the canister drops with only a few seconds remaining and goes *ka-boom*. The Camerlengo gets out via parachute and survives (which people call an act of God) on the same token, Langdon grabs a piece of glass or some sort of long, webbed piece of equipment and sails into a river or a street or some shit, hell I don’t know, and survives also.
I would buy that if it wasn’t for the fact this guy has had a fucking answer for EVERYTHING in the book. I mean once to save yourself in a freak accident is fine-but this is a SYMBOLOGY (or however you spell it) prof we’re talking about. He’s not a physicist. His life has been in danger, I don’t know how many times-by now he should be traumatized, by now he should be panicking and have someone else fly up and save him, by now he should stop being fucking MacGyver.
3: No setup between the protagonist and the antagonist: Well not really. The Hassassin is basically Devil-Langdon and loves taunting his foil. The problem is, we never get anything personal between the two. Furthermore, the battle between the two, while not intended to be epic, happens before the real villain shows up. From there, The Camerlengo takes full reins of bad-guy duties and while set up well beforehand, never sets into his villainous roll long enough for us to really get a feel for him once he sets himself on fire. It was more of an ending to a story rather than a showdown (which, let’s face it-that’s what Langdon needs since he’s Superman). Plus if you’re going to save Camerlengo as the main bad guy, for the love of God, reveal all his plot twists throughout the story rather than the last 30 pages.
The Prose:A lot of people want to call Langdon’s prose clumsy (well one from what I saw) and I find it interesting. Yes, the guy writes in a very confusing way, but it’s like I said-we’ve seen all this before, are you saying every thriller writer in existence is clumsy?. I don’t see why people today place so much emphasis on poetic prose. There’s purple prose and then there’s out of the way description and poetics, one you shouldn’t do, and one it doesn’t matter IF you do.
Brown’s prose doesn’t really win any awards, but it isn’t really that grating either. It gets the job done. Yes, some of his POV changes are questionable (nothing wrong with multiple 3rd person limited, just needs to be contained to 2 or 3 heads), but it’s nothing annoyingly difficult like a Stephen King novel.
The thing Dan Brown does do-that drives me insane is his use of passive writing. How many phrases of “Was going to” or “Was eating” do we need to stomach? No editor nowadays likes that crap and the only time we should see it is when they emphasize something-well he emphasizes just about every action Langdon does like he’s God or something (which makes sense when you think about it).
Overall though, I don’t need poetics, I don’t need five paragraphs of character monologues and I sure as hell don’t need him to make things more difficult than that book already is. It passes. You know what’s going on, until the last surplus of subplots. The only thing really grating is how he describes a few things-I didn’t know exactly how The Camerlengo immolated himself until I saw the movie of all things. There were a few other areas I felt lost in as well to say “What the hell is the architecture of this place, how did they get here? Can I have a writing GPS navigator?”
Speaking of the movie…
Angels and Demons: The Movie
I’ll admit, I never saw The DaVinci Code’s film adaptation, but once I finished with AaD I figured, “Let’s see how it translates to screen.” To be honest-not that bad. AaD isn’t going to make any awards, but it’s good popcorn entertainment.
Gone first of all is Kohler, CERN’s egotistical brains. With that out, several key points are omitted, found or welded together to make sure the storyline doesn’t have a dozen holes. Olivetti no longer makes himself a complete doofus (via not locking everyone up upon arrival) and is kinda more badass in his movie incarnation.
The story actually holds up pretty well, though there are just a few small changes here or there. The scene where Langdon actually gets into the Vatican Archives-and gets locked in (with no air) is changed, or at least different from how I envisioned it. And The Camerlengo is no longer Italian and instead Irish to keep up with Ewan MacGregor’s role in it. A decent change that shouldn’t piss off purists.
The Assassin however has the main alteration. Apparently, looking for a built agile badass was out of the question, because movie goers would realize Tom Hanks wouldn’t stand a chance. So they went out and hired Bill Gates, errr, Nikolaj Lie Kaas. A decent and threatening pick, sure. But again he’s just not who I’m thinking of for the role. He just looks more at home in a Dungeons and Dragons party than to be taking part in this plot. Thankfully, Robert doesn’t get into the chopper with The Camerlengo either-no director is going to let that scene go into a movie-everyone would groan.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
AaD isn’t a bad novel, but it isn’t a good one either. I think I’ve highlighted enough plot pieces that are questionable to prove that. Hopefully within all this you were able to figure out the semblance of a story, which actually entertains nicely. The problem is-AaD is predicatble. When they say they got 4 Cardinals that will be killed at intervals-you know all four are dead. When there’s a canister of anti-matter that’s going to blow at an exact time-you can bet they’ll get down to the crucial seconds to toss it. What it does surprise you with are the few maniacal villainy twists like The Camerlengo being The Pope’s kid. But it’s mute. The only other surprise is just how agile Langdon is in this whole mess. But who cares? I read this stuff daily I KNOW what’s going to happen. Joe Book Reader wants something entertainig-and guess what? AaD is pretty entertaining. Unfortunately, this is just an appetiser for The DaVinci Code. A book I have not gotten to, but know it’s far superior than this. Take out Rome and you have a normal run-of-the-mill thriller.
Then again take out space in Star Wars and you have an everyday fantasy…so there you go.
SCORE:
3.5/5
UP NEXT: I got vampires on the mind. I think we need to look at a certain vampire novel that made a certain author become a household name. The setting is a small unknown town where some fucked up shit happens to it. There’s also some bad romance in there too….
