My mother in law just bought me “Angels and Demons” by Dan Brown for my birthday. I got three chapters in by blind perseverance and had to put it down and get out a Ian M. Banks book.
The writing is attrocious, the dialogue is about as corny as it can get - quote “our roots infiltrate everything you can see … even the sacred fortress of our most sworn enemy”.
Get real, I read comics and the dialogue is more authentic than this crap. Don’t even get me started on his allegedly accurate scintific facts.
Has anyone else read any of his books, what do you think? How did he become so popular?
Someone at the office picked up all three of his books at Costco, and we took turns passing them around. We all liked Angels and Demons, although there were a few :rolleyes: moments. The Davinci Code was ok, but we were already joking about how it was the same story, only with easier clues.
By Digital Fortress (the whole process took place over about a month), we gave up on him and were only reading for the sake of mockery (and man, there were some howlers). The man has only one story in him (the books all have the same first chapter, for Og’s sake), and it gets less interesting with each telling. Before I even started reading the third one, I was asking my co-workers, “so the trusted friend turns out to be on the other side at the 3/4 mark?” “Yep.” “The object everyone’s chasing turns out not to be what they thought it was?” “Yep.” “There’s an assassin with some trait that sets him apart from society?” “Yep.”
I don’t consider it good writing, but I don’t hate it as much as others on the board do. If I have nothing else to read, I’ll read one of his books, but I usually skim a lot of the pages.
I read Digital Fortress while on vacation because I had already finished the two books I brought to read. After the very first reference to the bad guy’s partner, I turned to my husband (who had already read the book) and said
Do these “brilliant minds” ever figure out that the “partner’s” e-mail is an anagram of his own name? I mean, that’s gotta be a clue or something. I’m not brilliant, but I saw it right away.
I read Digital Fortress for the entertainment value as well, and so I can joke with my NSA-employee friends about their work. They take the same view as Antonius’s friends; that Brown should either claim his books are complete fiction or actually get his facts right. But I guess he’s not one to let those pesky “facts” get in the way of (he thinks) a good story. :rolleyes:
Stryfe, I too was awarded with Angels and Demons as a “present” by an enthusiastic Deebie. Literally could not get past page one. This was bad prose that screamed to be put out of its misery. And I *wanted * to like Dan Brown- secret societies and age-old conspiracies are the shiznit to me, but . . . I dunno, I would never look down my nose at anyone who genuinely loves Dan Brown, because I’ve been there. It’s not hard to endure a kinda bad writer like, say, Robert Ludlum, because his plots are so fantastic. People just have different thresholds.
It’s obvious that Brown’s storytelling powers are prodigious. Which is why I’ll be more than willing to see the movie in the hands of such a capable director as Ron Howard.
Oh goodness. I’m sure the book is awful, but this degree of awfulness is making me curious. (The last thing I finished was Atlanta Nights, so perhaps there’s a theme here.) Maybe I’ll pick this up from a library sometime. No way am I paying for it.