Needs less ashamed Catholic scientists and more science
I am a scientist and I was raised Catholic. At one point in the book, the pope is preaching about how science has no morals and cannot guide the world ethically and blah blah blah. All the Catholic science characters that work at CERN are listening and thinking to themselves, "Oh my God, that's so true. I feel so ashamed to be a scientist" and blah blah.
I am sitting there reading with the book in my hand, thinking, "Really? REALLY? Are you sure you don't want to disagree with the pope and say that scientists such as yourselves can be moral without needing the church to guide you?" Because that's what I would have said, if I lived in Dan Brown's world and I had to listen to that speech! Sheesh.
In a more general critique of the book, Dan Brown needs to work on leading up to and executing plot twists. I can imagine that his plot twists sound really good on an outline, but they do not work in the novel. Being as vague as I can be to avoid spoiling the book, certain characters turn out to be evil, but Dan Brown does not provide good foreshadowing. He provides explanations after the fact and he has the characters evilly monologue and talk about how it was "so obvious" and "duh," but it does not work for me. It is too much of a 180 degree turn, too quickly. Dan Brown did the same thing in The Da Vinci Code. The writing is such that you can see it coming right before it happens, in what must be Brown's attempt at hasty foreshadowing, but it goes against character's entire development. Dan Brown, EXTEND your foreshadowing across many chapters! Do not just shove it all in before the twist. It is annoying.
Lastly, for a book supposedly about the forces of science trying to undermine the church, there is VERY LITTLE SCIENCE. No biology. No biochemistry. No modern chemistry, only proto-chemistry. A little bit of modern physics (for the plot about anti-matter) and some physics history (Galileo). Mostly talk about angles and "science" symbolism, and a bad joke about ions, but disappointingly very little science. Come on Dan Brown, couldn't you have one of the surprise twists be that the Vatican had buildings dispersed like the architecture of the cell or something? "My God, the next clue must be in the mitochondria! That direction!" Something like that.
Oh well. I can't really blame Dan Brown. No, I blame all the people who told me that Angels and Demons was better than The Da Vinci Code! Damn you, bad recommendations! At least I had fun raging about all the misunderstandings of science. It was actually kind of entertaining in the beginning, which is what disappoints me the most about the end. I want to like this book, but the character and plot development does not make it to the end. Dan Brown has interesting premises, but not writing.
Fellow readers of the book, please do not vote me unhelpful if you only disagree with me. Unhelpful would be, "Boo, bad writing, did not like." I put more effort into my review than that.Read full review
