Angels and Demons - Dan Brown

...world wide.

Angels and Demons is the prequel to The Da Vinci Code telling us the story of Symbologist Robert Langdon's adventures in the Vatican city one year before his fateful visit to the Louvre in Paris ( in Da Vinci Code )

In Dan Brown's words ' Angels and Demons is the novel in which i first created the character of Robert Langdon and indulged his passion for Art, Symbology, Codes, Secret Societies and the gray area ...
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The Story of Angels and Demons


The story begins with Robert Langdon the world renowned Harvard based Symbologist summoned by Maximilan Kohler, director general of CERN, the swiss research facilty to analyze a cryptic symbol seared into the chest of a brutally murdered Brilliant Physicist Leonardo Vetra, who was also a catholic priest. what Robert Langdon discovers is unimaginable.
He is plunged straight into the deadly ... more

Dan Brown is the author of the super successful fiction ' The Da Vinci Code ', which was later made into an equally successful film.
Dan Brown is an American novelist. His fictions feature the recurring themes of cryptography, keys, symbols and codes, and have been translated into 51 languages world wide.

Angels and Demons is the prequel to The Da Vinci Code telling us the story of Symbologist Robert Langdon's adventures in the Vatican city one year before his fateful visit to the Louvre in Paris ( in Da Vinci Code )

In Dan Brown's words ' Angels and Demons is the novel in which i first created the character of Robert Langdon and indulged his passion for Art, Symbology, Codes, Secret Societies and the gray area between the Good and the Evil. the riddles in angels and Demons are just as visually arresting as those in Da Vinci 's paintings.

The Story of Angels and Demons

The story begins with Robert Langdon the world renowned Harvard based Symbologist summoned by Maximilan Kohler, director general of CERN, the swiss research facilty to analyze a cryptic symbol seared into the chest of a brutally murdered Brilliant Physicist Leonardo Vetra, who was also a catholic priest. what Robert Langdon discovers is unimaginable.
He is plunged straight into the deadly world of vendetta against the Catholic church and specifically the Vatican, by a centuries old organization The Illuminati.
At CERN Robert comes across Victoria Vetra , the beautiful adopted daughter of the slain Physicist. Victoria was working closely with her father on a secret experiment.
Robert and Victoria together embark on frantic hunt for the killer , through various channels used by the deadly gang. They hunt through Secret vaults, Sealed crypts, deserted Cathedrals and come across the most secretive vault on Earth...
But Illuminati is determined to find them both before they stumble upon their deadly secret. Their agenda was simple - Revenge !

My views

The description is enough to chill your bones. It is very absorbing, interesting and very violent ,more so than The Da vinci code.
According to Dan Brown The brotherhood of Illuminati is factual and so are the various references to all works of Art, tombs,Tunnels and Architecture in Rome, which can still be seen today.
A little background to the Illuminati - Illuminati was the first scientific think tank founded by a group of brilliant Physicists , Mathematicians, Astronomers , and some of the most enlightened men in Italy in the 1500's, sharing their concern about the church's monopoly on 'Truth' , which they felt threatened the academic enlightenment around the world. The group was meeting in secrecy and spreading the message of science and enlightenment .

But when the church closed in on them, they went deep underground, where they mixed with other refugee groups like the Alchemists , Occulties , Fanatic Muslim groups and fanatic Jews. This completely changed their original concern and outlook.
And over a period of time a new darker Illuminati emerged. They were very powerful and very very dangerous. They began infiltrating into every system in the world and this was their major powerhouse.
The old Illuminati had Galileo and Bernini , who were both considered to be the pillars of Illuminati.
No doubt the story is very absorbing, but i am not at all sure whether any of Dan Brown's stories are healthy for one's mind.I like to read a racy suspenseful thriller, but graphic violence and satanic doings are definitely not something that I would like to read on a regular basis.

There are references to Leonardo da Vinci , who supposedly had gathered his expertise on human form by exhuming human corpses and dissecting their musculature ( sic ! ) well what can one say to that !

I was also completely unaware that the world wide web was invented by the Swiss and not Americans as it is usually presumed. Somewhere when quizzed about this
Maximilian Kohler the chief of CERN shrugs it off as a petty misconception over a petty technology !
Dan Brown's account of the persistent BBC lights following the action was highly amusing , adding some lighter touch to what is otherwise a very scary fiction.
There are ample references to the architectural delights of Rome and Vatican .
The climax somehow did not live upto my expectations, reading more like a film script.

But I do recommend this super suspenseful thriller because it is easily one of the most chilling book I have read

 

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