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 …more 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. (less)