title: Angels and Demons
author: Dan Brown
pages: 569
first sentence: 'High atop the steps of the great Pyramid of Giza a young woman laughed and called down to him.'
rated: 3 1/2 out of 5
An ancient secret brotherhood.
A devastating new weapon of destruction.
An unthinkable target.
When world-renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to a Swiss research facility to analyze a mysterious symbol -- seared into the chest of a murdered physicist -- he discovers evidence of the unimaginable: the resurgence of an ancient secret brotherhood known as the Illuminati... the most powerful underground organization ever to walk the earth.
The Illuminati has surfaced from the shadows to carry out the final phase of its legendary vendetta against its most hated enemy... the Catholic Church.
Professor of religous iconology at Harvard, Robert Langdon, is woken from his sleep by his telephone ringing. A man named Maximillian Kohler tells Robert he needs to see him right away. Robert thinks it is a prank call by one of his crazier fans, and hangs up. Minutes later a photo is faxed to Robert, it is of a murdered man with the 'Illuminati' symbol branded on his chest.
'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 hisorical hearsay-but this image before him was today. Present tense. He felt like a paleontologist coming face to face with a living dinosaur.'
Robert is flown to Switzerland to a research facility where the murder took place, on a plane that goes Mach fifteen no less, so he is there in an hour.
Kohler shows him the body of the scientist Vetra, and tells him what he thinks is happening, the Illuminati, and ancient underground organization is behind the killing. Vetra's daughter a scientist as well, Vittoria, quickly arrives and goes off with Langdon in search of a bomb that has been placed in the Vatican City. The bomb was made using the encased antimatter that Vetra and his daughter helped create.
'The image of her father's quiet genius being used as a tool of destruction was like poison in her blood. Antimatter was the ultimate terrorist weapon. It had no metalic parts to trip metal detectors, no chemical signatures for dogs to trace, no fuse to deactivate if the authorties located the canister. The countdown had begun....'
This was an exciting read. It was intense. I like how Dan Brown puts alot of information on so many different topics, mostly religious ones:
'The early cross, Langdon knew, was the most common symbol of the four elements-four arms representing Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. Beyond that, though, there existed literally dozens of symbolic occurrences of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water throughout history-the Pythagorean cycles of life, the Chinese Hong-Fan, the Jungian male and female rudiments, the quadrants of the Zodiac, even the Muslims revered the four ancient elements...although in Islam they were known as "squares, clouds, lightning, and waves."'
The reason I only gave it a 3 1/2 star rating is because...okay hear me out...I know alot of readers like Dan Brown, but I'm not a big fan of his. His work is very good, but for some reason, for me, it starts off great, then he drags it out too long for my taste, then eventually I begin to get bored with it. I enjoyed this book but I felt he could have told the story in less than 569 pages. I did like Robert Langdon & Vittoria's characters.
'Langdon fought to focus his thoughts, but the situation was too bizarre to grasp rationally. Six hours ago he had been sound alseep on Cambridge. Now he was in Europe, caught up in a surreal battle of ancient titans, packing a semiautomatic in his Harris tweed, and holding hands with a woman he had only just met.'
this has been part of the following reading challenges:
triple 8
TBR
suspense & thriller
