Ok, I decided to give it a third chance on audio, and finally finished the thing. Here are some notes to Dan Brown:

1) A person does not chuckle often, and when she does, she doesn't do it three times in one conversation.

2) Similarly, a person does not "sense" what is happening very often. If you can't find a way to transfer info from one person to another without them "sensing" something fourteen times, then maybe you should develop your story better.

3) Also similarly, having a character read from a wiki page or lecture a classroom does not further the plot. It convinces the reader that you don't know how to further the plot. Just write a damned non-fiction book about the Masons, already.

4) Retire Robert Langdon. He can't keep being surprised by the same lone-character-driven-mad-by-something-having-to-do-with-the-big-reveal unless he's dumb. According to note number 2, he tends to lecture a lot, so I don't think he's dumb.

5) 133 chapters plus epilogues? Edit already.

So why two instead of just one star? Because I honestly didn't see the big reveal coming. I'd recommend someone watch National Treasure and re-read Da Vinci Code before I'd recommend that they read this.

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Previous notes:

After two months of trying to get the story while avoiding the TERRIBLE writing, I finally put it down. I want to know what happens, but I'll wait for the movie. This guy is an awful writer. Overuse of italics to show emphasis and the repeated "why, I'm a professor so let me tell you the answer to the conveniently asked question" were bad enough, but the phrase "feminine intuition" just about landed the book across the room. Sorry, Dan Brown. I was always a fan, but this one just pushed me over the edge. Maybe it's because I bought it and was trying to read it in hardcover that the conventions were more obvious than when I read the others in paperback, but I just can't do it anymore.