Wednesday Blog Post: On Dan Brown's Angels & Demons

(What follows is an in-depth discussion of the book Angels & Demons, containing plot spoilers. Just so you've been warned.)


I don't usually read a lot of "popular" fiction. If a book seems interesting, I'm always willing to give it a try if I can get my hands on a copy. I read Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code a few years back, after the movie came out, and I remember thinking the book was tons better. So, before Angels & Demons came out, I didn't want to repeat the same mistake twice, and my friend Adriane conveniently gave me a copy.

Maybe I've spent too much time reading books on how to write, because this book did not blow me away by any means. From page one, I found myself thinking on everything I've learned and how I would address Brown's writing in a workshop setting.

The first third of the novel moves too slow, especially for a suspense thriller. Why spend so much time describing Robert Langdon's home, only to put him on a super jet and fly him to Geneva a few pages later? Spend the reader's time getting to the point of the action, where the drama is at its strongest. Focusing on descriptions - like Brown did with Leonardo Vetra's lab, while Vetra lies dead upstairs - doesn't cut it.

It doesn't help that Langdon, a Harvard professor and symbologist, doesn't have much to do in the beginning of the novel. Until he discovers the poem and starts to follow the Path of Illumination, Langdon goes through the novel with a dazed look on his face - "Oh snap, there's Illuminati around?!" He definitely fulfills the role of the Everyman thrown into an extraordinary situation, but as the hero of the story, it sure takes him a while to live up to the role. I also didn't get why Brown always refers to Langdon's "Harris tweed jacket" - this brand means nothing to me. I'd be more intereste if this jacket was worn or had holes, a personality to it. Brown refers to a lot of brand names in Angels & Demons, and to me it sounded like a lazy man's way of describing something.

That being said, once the story moves to Rome and Langdon and Co. start to chase the Hassassin, the man committing the Illuminati's vicious murders, the pace picks up. This was where my interest in the novel grew, as Langdon and Vetra's daughter, Vittoria, race through obscure church after church, finding the branded cardinals, following the clues. The amount of reseach Brown needed to get these details was obvious; the descriptions of the churches were one of my favorite parts of the whole book. I wanted to know what happened next, even while I wondered who the mastermind behind the Illuminati plot was.

Which brings me to my next point: Trick endings are still cheap. Finding out that it was actually the camerlengo, the Pope's personal attendant, at the very end put an entirely different twist on the story. Thinking the master was Max Kohler, the director of CERN, made sense because Brown describes him as cold, unfeeling, dislikeable. Even his assistant hopes he won't recover from one of his frequent medical emergencies. On the other hand, Brown writes the camerlengo as sympathetic, an orphan taken in by the church and who really, truly believes that God has a plan in mind for him. Apparently that plan was to resurrect the ancient fear of the Illuminati, kill some cardinals, almost blow up the Vatican, and come out looking like a hero for all of 30 seconds. Who knew?

Both Angels & Demons and The DaVinci Code work as thrillers because they are literally written in the same format. Just a few similarities I noticed:

- Both open with the murder of an old man under highly ritualistic circumstances (scientist Leonardo Vetra; museum curator Jacques Sauniere)
- Both involve secret societies that the Catholic church tried to banish (the Illuminati; the Knights Templar)
- Both have a "hired hand" to do all the dirty work (the Hassassin; Silas)
- Both have a female relative of the first victim helping Robert Langdon (Vittoria Vetra, Leonardo's daughter; Sophie Neveu, Sauniere's granddaughter)
- Both have law enforcement who don't buy into Langdon's theories (Captain Olivetti of the Swiss Guard; Bezu Fache of the French police)
- Both have a disabled man as part, or seeming to be part, of the scheme (Maximilian Kohler and his super high-tech wheelchair; Sir Leigh Teabing and his leg braces and crutches)
- And, of course, the whole "figure out clues to track down the killer and ultimate prize" thing.

Having read Angels & Demons, The DaVinci Code seems like a rehash of the first book - still a thrill ride, but not the epic triumph I was hoping for. I am glad, however, that I read this one befroe seeing how Tom Hanks brings Robert Langdon to the big screen.