Book Review: The Da Vinci Code

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is an extension of a previous post I called Is It a Novel or Non-Fiction?

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown received a lot of reviews when it was first published and as a result potential readers will find a vast variety of opinions on this book. I’ve read humorous ones, defensive ones, “from the heart” ones and down right rude ones, but in the end I decided that the only opinion that matters is my own and in order to have an opinion I had to read the book.

I saw the movie when it first came out, but in all honesty I couldn’t remember much of the storyline. I knew it was something to do with The Knights Templar, The Holy Grail and conspiracy. Beyond that, my memory had cast the rest into oblivion. These days, my brain does that a lot so that isn’t an indication of what I thought of the movie.

Anyway, despite what people say I felt the storyline was good, plausible. It was well developed and, for the most part, fast paced. Whether the details were factual or not doesn’t concern me, because the book is fiction and the author made me believe that they could be true and that is all that matters. The characters were realistic, although I felt they talked too much at crucial times (especially in life and death situations), which was annoying. All in all, I enjoyed the story.

But…

What let this book down for me was the overly long non-fiction aspect of the story. I was reading a story and didn’t want history lessons thrown in every few pages. I could handle the short ones, but some of them were pages long and I found that more than a little annoying. In fact, after the first hundred or so pages, I stopped reading them. I didn’t lose touch with the storyline because of this.

The author would have been better off writing a story and leaving the research out of it. He might have thought he was enhancing the story by including so much detail, but for me, it ruined the entire book. Without the research, this book would have been a fast paced, page turner.

I find myself wondering if his other books are the same. If so, I don’t think I want to subject myself to more history lessons. It is such a shame, because I think the storylines (on their own) would be great.