The Da Vinci Code
Preparing for my Christmas holiday in Norway, I brought three books to enjoy the time, shifting into a slower gear. I just finished the first one, "The Da Vinci code" by Dan Brown. It is quite famous by now, but for you who don't know, it is a present time crime/mystery where the main characters are thrown into a drama where they expose the history of secrets surrounding (among other things) Jesus, the Catholic church, goddess worship and secret cults. Apart from the religious/mystical theme, it is built up like a classic crime novel. The author paints the full story with broad brush strokes: The reader is spared of advanced nonsense like parallel story lines and jumps in time, and the need to go pages back to "just get into it again" is simply not there. The number of characters in the book is very low too, something along the lines of an average Hollywood movie. Now, that doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing, as I still remember the pain of trying to keep an overview over the Buendía family in "One hundred years of solitude", but when reading this book it felt like the author didn't expect much from his readers. Another annoying element is the cliffhangers: The book is littered with sentences like "She opened the door and froze for a second, gasping at the scene displaying in front of her", followed by some "At the same time, somewhere else" paragraphs before revealing what the shocking sight was. Cheap. Really cheap. And transparent. But yes, I guess that makes the book a "page turner". The villain of the book is of the kind whose true identity you just know will be displayed at the end of the book, and then of course it will be someone that is in the main characters' vicinity. When that finally happens, he is so stereotypical evil /stupid that you just have to shrug. Not exactly Agatha Christie.
Dan Brown has been accused of mixing fact and fiction in this book, something I have no problem with at all. I really enjoy some of the subjects discussed. Secret societies, conspiracies, ciphers. It just has been done so much better before. Reading The Da Vinci code is like reading The Illuminatus! Trilogy after it has been cut, blended and poured into a low-fat crime novel sauce pan. If you like the secret society mythology in The Da Vinci Code, The Illuminatus! Trilogy will give you a solid overdose, and if you like codes and ciphers, especially with a bit of the history behind it, please check out Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. Both books are fiction and very entertaining, but not on a "Reader's digest" level as The Da Vinci Code. Hail Eris.

- posted by Mikal @ 01:06