What readers think of Angels & Demons, plus links to write your own review.

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Angels & Demons by Dan Brown

Angels & Demons

by Dan Brown
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (5):
  • Readers' Rating (81):
  • First Published:
  • May 1, 2000, 480 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Jun 2001, 480 pages
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There are currently 58 reader reviews for Angels & Demons
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Micke (06/08/24)

Insanely bad
The science in this book is so appallingly bad that it brings tears to my eyes. I don't see how someone could sit down and write such a story without having even the most basic understanding of the science. It is so wrong that it is grotesque. This makes a mess of the entire story..
Varsha (10/11/22)

Angels and demons review
Best science fiction of all time.
Dan Brown has put a lot of mystery, science, fiction, drama everything in this novel. Had my eyes glued to it and I've completed reading it today. Many questions arise from each and every sentence.
Go grab this novel and it will make you read itself.
Joseph Sta Ana (04/07/16)

Angels and Demons
Angels and Demons is a very fascinating read. In the two days it took for me to read it, it really kept to the edge of my seat; it was something really worth reading. The chase, the mystery and cleverness of the Illuminati and the modern world is a clever take on history. After reading it, it kept me baffled if all the facts are real, just like how Michael Crichton does on his books and stories. The story itself is the Illuminati Diamond; readers can't help but stare at it's wonderful ingenuity.
shubhangi (11/13/15)

best book by brown
Best book ever, for a fact-loving as well as mystery-loving person.
enakshie (10/31/13)

awesome read
It is an exceptionally good book and the various facts and twists makes it a fun read . A book impossible to put down . I was really addicted to it and finished it in just 2 days. I would seriously like to read more books similar to ANGELS AND DEMONS.
a fantabulous thriller.......
Sarah (08/15/13)

& -
I found the book to be paradoxically entertaining and annoying. On the plus side, It is a good story with a lot of twists. I appreciate the fast pace and the layers of discovery, which even shock scholars like Langdon et al. Over and over. Annoying.
Moreover, I definitely felt similar to Mister Lennox concerning the thesaurus issue - there is an indulgent use of obscure words that only loosely describe what is intended throughout. The inaccuracies are very disappointing as they throw a shadow of novelty to the novel which then, for me, makes the theme of God and Catholicism seem devaluing. It didn't really sit right with me. I can see why it has became so popular because it seems so sensational, and maybe it seems to give the reader more fulfillment than an average novel in terms of historical and cultural knowledge - but it is a load of bollocks, really.
MitchMars (07/10/13)

Waste of good paper
Hard to add more to the astute, John Lomax review. How anyone, who appreciates books, and is over twenty one could consider Angles and Demons more than trite, (language, characterization) clumsy, misinformed, melodrama, not worthy of the most banal science fiction is mind boggling. A waste of good paper!
John Lomax (11/13/11)

A successful hack at work
This novel is decidedly hack work. I cannot quite understand how a book this badly researched and written ever made past the fact checkers and copy editors. Simon & Schuster ought to be ashamed of themselves for letting one of their leading authors look so bad. I guess that one best seller inevitably leads to another, no matter how awkwardly written and inaccurate the next book is. I must say that Angels and Demons has relieved me of any urge to read The Da Vinci Code. What are my principal complaints? Brown displays no ear for the English language. He cannot HEAR what he writes, or plainly his writing would not be so very clunky. He seems to be the kind of writer who takes words from a thesaurus without any feeling either for the denotations or the connotations of the words that he finds. Thus he uses words that are ALMOST right time after time after time. They are off just enough to produce a distinct "clang" when read. The effect is jarring. The book has a pseudo-profound texture that is one mark of a self-important but mediocre writer. Symbology? Why not semiotics, the term that the academic world actually uses? And how many factual mistakes can Brown make? I lost count. His translations of Latin and Italian are frequently off and sometimes flat wrong, but I admit that his mistranslations usually serve his story nicely. Any reasonably well-read layperson would have a better grasp of recent science than he exhibits. Historical accuracy? Forget about it! Brown's characters are endlessly "shocked" by information that could easily be gleaned from TIME magazine. The same goes for Brown's (mis)understanding of Christian theology, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Vatican. His grasp of the layout of Rome is less firm than what a tourist with a good street map might pick up in a few days. And could he not afford to hire someone to draw him an accurate map of Rome? His big manifesto in chapter 94 is maudlin, trite, and embarrassing. Why read the book? I kind of liked the movie. I mean, who doesn't like Tom Hanks? Plus, the screenwriters actually know how to write. I have to admire the way that they reworked this dog into something coherent. When I saw a copy of the book for $3 at Big Lots, I thought, "Why not?" About 20-25 chapters in I had become desensitized enough to its fundamental badness that I stayed around to find out how it turned out. It's a decent story, badly written. I congratulate Dan Brown on making the most of sloppy research and limited writing skills. Nice work if you can get it, and plainly Brown can.

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