Reviewed: “Angels & Demons” by Dan Brown

From the land of “better late than never,” I have finally read Dan Brown’s Angels & Demons, the prequel to The DaVinci Code. I’ve been trying to remember why I put off reading it so long and this is what I’ve come up with:

I have an aversion to prequels.

My view is probably muddied by prequel movies but, on the whole, they haven’t ever been as good as what they’re supposed to come before. My view has now changed.

Angels & Demons is far, far better than it’s follow-up, and I loved The DaVinci Code.

Simply put there’s more … story to the prequel.

The plot is much the same – a race against time to find out the secrets that time has buried before someone, or more, people die – but is deeper. The characters are more complex, their individual stories are better developed, and the details are fuller.

Maybe, in the end, this is a product of this particular prequel having been written after the original.

Either way, it met virtually all of the criteria I look for in a book:

First, it captured my attention in the first fifty pages; really in the first five, to be honest.

Second, it made me not want to read another book at the same time, much less put this book down.

Third, it’s based in history. And the historical facts mentioned in the book, like Bernini’s sculpture The Ecstasy of St. Teresa, proved to be when I looked them up.

Fourth, in conjunction with number three, it made me want to look things up and learn more. I’ve got a weakness for conspiracy theories and I’ve heard about the Illuminati in various places but nothing ever stoked my interest in them enough that I set out to learn more specifically about the group and it’s members.

And fifth, I already want to read it again.

I tried to predict what would happen, I really did, and I couldn’t. The ending of the story caught me completely off guard even though I thought I knew the characters and their motivations but I wasn’t quite there. I love books like that.

Will I read it again? Yes.

After I read The DaVinci Code again, of course.