fun story, but what crappy writing!

[Pamela]

Chuckell wrote: "A five-letter word that has something to do with Isaac Newton . . . a red orb, with a seeded womb . . . what can it be? What can it be!?! Ah, the kind of mystery that would confound the sages of th..."

And as said by Jason: and no, i don't have any problems with his clashes against mainstream religion. im an atheist and i was far more insulted but his mathematical naivety.

a fibbonacci sequence doesn't constitute a code. anyone who's gone through calculus would recognize it in thirty seconds.

I managed to finish the book, but not without tossing it against the wall approximately once every chapter. It was this total lack of anything resembling research into to riddles and mathematics that irked most of all. I mean, a leading cryptographer who can't recognize a freakin' Fibbonacci sequence????

[Ahmad]

The writing was terrible bar a single page (that describes the apple/ eureka moment). One feels that the author deliberately misleads as well. A big waste of time. My first and last Dan Brown novel.

[Kathryn]

Eileen wrote: "Sorry, but this guy must have a cliché reference book on his desk. And he might as well just call his characters Barbie and Ken for all their depth.

And if you think the subject matter was a big..."

Agreed.

[Tim The Enchanter]

The book was entertaining but I agree that it was not particularly well written. I probably would not have read it but for the furor that surrounded it. It is overated in my opinion but it is still entertaining and worth a read.

[Anthony]

Hi all,

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks his writing isn't all that great.

As a side note - I seem to remember reading, although I can't remember from which book (either 'Angels and Demons' or 'Da Vinci Code'), Brown saying that he'd based the leading man on one of his close friends. This is clearly a bit of a strange and risky strategy for a writer and may well have led to how 'vanilla' the leading man seemed to me throughout the stories. My view: for sure take inspiration and reference from those around you but do not, under any circumstances, model your cast on any particular individual (no matter how much you'd love to immortalise them)...

On a positive note: his success has encouraged a whole load of people to get back to reading books. That can only be a good thing!

[Valentin]

Erica wrote: "Oh I agree. The writing was terrible, although the story could have been very interesting. I think first graders could write more developed sentences and characters. "
Some times I've had the feeling that his mother is author !

[Hayley]

I bought this book to pass time on a long train journey - and started to regret it. The idea is a good one, and I can see why many people would pick it up wanting to read it but his style of writing annoyed me! Less than an hour in I gave up trying to follow it and decided to just sleep the rest of the journey.

It does seem a shame that he was unable to write in such a way that everyone could enjoy his books but some people do, after forcing myself to finish the book my family started running off with it and they've actually all enjoyed each one he's written.

[Silly]

It was an entertaining book I thought.

[Molly]

The inaccuracies in this book bothered me more than anything else. I had a hard time taking this book seriously on any level when the Langdon came off as a know-it-all who had no idea what he was talking about. Normally I can let inaccuracies slide for the sake of enjoying the story, but when the author insists that all of them are true and they seriously harm the entire point of the story, I get annoyed.

[Deborah]

I never finished it, so I can t comment. It kept putting me to sleep.

[Moominmama]

Well I thought it was tosh but quite enjoyable tosh! I agree with Norman's comments,its not a book that should be lending itself to worthy critisism about writing styles-DB is a too easy a target here. I tend not to go for 'blockbuster' type novels as a rule but I was intrigued by some of the hype and the subject matter. Not knowing anything about the mathmatics or theories beforehand I thought they were quite cleverly incorporated; (I for one did go rushing to the computer to check out the paintings!) Sure, the writing may be clunky with poor character development but the book still managed to capture the imaginations of many people and thats why it made a lot of money. Why should we be angry at that? I have to say I've felt exploited and ripped off by books before, (including one I read recently which was nominated for a literary prize) but I didn't in this case.
I went on to read a couple of DB's other books too and one of them
was the first book I downloaded on my Kindle as I wanted something 'easy' to help me change to the new format. (which in itself was easier than I had thought ) At the time I wasn't expecting,or looking for high literature, just a jolly page turner.

[Judi]

It was a fun, fast reading story that got people reading. It was however very poorly written - no reason for such huge success!

[Sharon]

This the type of truly bad writing and unrealistic story plots / details that make me curious how some writers actually get published and worse, become so popular! Total mystery.......

[Sara]

MoreCowbell wrote: "Olivia wrote: The writing was so bad that it distracted from its so called "page-turner!" qualities.

So what about the writing that was bad? Was it bad grammar, bad plot development, bad characte..."

I'm going to take this up, if you don't mind, since you're looking for a general perspective about why this novel is "bad." I'd love to know Olivia's thoughts, too.

To start, the dialogue was tremendously bad. Like dime-store-noir bad. The characters were barely more than stereotypes (I've seen more highly-developed paper dolls). The plot developed terribly, with unrealistic and over-the-top plot twists. These are some aspects of the "badness" of the book that I remember off the top of my head.

And yes, seeing that I have an English degree, I'd say that I'm probably qualified to say that it was pretty bad objectively and from an educated perspective.

Now, that's not to say that there's anything wrong with reading this book. These types of books have their place, and regardless of the quality of the writing, the writer obviously struck popular imagination, which makes it something of a success.

There's certainly nothing wrong about "slumming" with some bad writing once in a while. I get a kick out of Ed Wood movies and other bad mid-20th Century B-Movies, too, but that doesn't mean I make the mistake of considering them high art. There's Citizen Kane and there's Plan 9 from Outer Space. This book, while fun, is no Citizen Kane. ;)

[Sharon]

Enjoyed reading that. Thank you. Another aspect was the naive bordering on red neck lack of knowledge of the places he was setting his book, story in. As a European, I was laughing outright at the silly lack of knowledge. The final trip France to England was hilarious. In fact a lot of the settings were so convoluted they were simply funny. The tragic part is that this book not only became a huge best seller, made the writer filthy rich but was picked up and dramatized for film by professionals I would have expected better from. The film (s) were NUTS but funny enough if one disregards any engagement of brain, nice lazy television fare....remind me of the NA made for tv type dramas, some good and some just lazy entertainment.