yulek's Journal: Angels & Demons

I read Angels and Demons by Dan Brown last month. Argh. So I'm out of touch, but I didn't know who Dan Brown was and althought I've heard of it, I hadn't read The DaVinci Code (and now I probably never will).

A&D sucks. On the surface, I have to admit, it was difficult to put down. The story was magnetic but in a very cheap way. Also I was stuck in an airbus for 28 hours over the Pacific.

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Am I the only one fucking sick and tired of all female scientists in popular fiction having to be beautiful and in tight shorts. Is Jolie going to play Vittoria in the movie?

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Note to Dan: historical research != an [I Feel Lucky] search on Google...

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There's lots of cheap twists and shocks, naivette about science, The Illuminati, the Vatican, human relationships, CERN, etc. He *almost* gets interesting on some scientific stuff but then stops just short of. Writing for the masses does not mean you have to dumb everything down for the "common man".

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Trite dialogue fills the space between his action sequences and popular science. And a good and proper dark mood is totally ruined by misplaced repartee and schoolgirl writing style flirting between Robert and Vittoria.

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Dan Brown wrote this book with one thing in mind. Big budget formula movie. And it shows. Already it's on my "Must Miss" list. Hire the ID4 team. Get lots of CG. Plug book into mold (look how well it fits : to paraphrase The Player, "it's Hanibal meets Tomb Raider meets The Sum of all Fears"). Hire Bruckenheimer to produce it. Sprinkle with teaser ads using Carmina Burana's 'O Fortuna' as music byte and TA-DA : instant blockbuster for the masses. Thank you but I'll pass on the Dan Brown full colonic.

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This book annoyed me so much I'll probably never end up reading The DaVinci Code which is probably better. It is, isn't it?

UPDATE 3/7: nm, someone i trust says DVC sucks too.

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The Illuminati anagrams were very cool tho. Props to the artist.