Reviews tagging 'Death'

Angels & Demons by Dan Brown

51 reviews

electric_revenge's review against another edition

adventurous challenging informative tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Misogyny, Sexual assault, Torture, Violence, Blood, and Religious bigotry

carlaabra's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

Wow, a long book but it went (mostly) fast! Action mystery/thriller, this is a prequel to the Da Vinci Code with a violent showdown between the Illuminati and the Vatican, plus the two MCs (symbology at MMC and physicist FMC) trying to stop them.

Characters- bland, dialogue is funny in a cliche hokey way. Our main characters each suffered a Traumatic Event as a child that gave them very specific worldviews for the rest of their lives… meh. Also, FMC Vittoria the Bio Entanglement Physicist was particularly ludicrous, with her incessant references to “ah yes I know this Obscure Skill that comes in handy during Plot Event because a dolphin taught it to me” or some shit. MMC is The Hot Professor who does water polo, is super smart, but just doesn’t have a need for women in his life right now. Plus he’s fucking indestructible. Anywho, this is a plot book, just laugh and move on. 

Plot- whew, so many twists and turns! I was hooked for a long while even though I don’t like history. The first really tense portion (for the first cardinal) and then the last portion were the best. In between the action lagged a bit, and the author has a habit of interjecting flashbacks or wordy descriptions of scenery into  what *should* be tense scenes. 

Writing- a step up from the Da Vinci Code, which I found almost unreadable when I tried it years ago. Yes, there are some cheesy cliffhangers and foreshadowing. (“Robert was scared now. Little did he know, later that day he’d be in more danger than ever before. <chapter ends>”). Skimming is your friend. I can only read about Roman architecture for so long.

There’s some messaging about religion vs science that got a little preachy imo, though the author ends on a fairly neutral stance. 

One pet peeve: FMC in danger of rape by villain, MMC must save! Like.. this is a historical mystery thriller, did we really need that.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death and Violence

Moderate: Sexual violence

Sexual assault is attempted but not completed. Skip the portions from the villain’s POV if you want to skip this.

usercube's review against another edition

informative reflective relaxing fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death and Hate crime

pearlnavratik's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

excellent book, but was slightly thrown off by the sensualization of the sole female character

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Sexual violence, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Blood, Vomit, Medical content, Kidnapping, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Sexual harassment, and Injury/Injury detail

shetland_pone's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.5

If you don't pay any attention, it's fun, but the moment you start to think about things it all falls apart. Langdon is a Mary Sue, most of the characters are seriously unlikeable, and the ending was a shitshow. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Death, Physical abuse, Sexism, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Kidnapping, Death of parent, and Murder

Moderate: Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Terminal illness, Religious bigotry, and Sexual harassment

naiu_cs's review against another edition

challenging dark tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death and Fire/Fire injury

Moderate: Violence, Blood, Death of parent, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Sexual content and Sexual violence

literallysam's review against another edition

adventurous informative mysterious tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

The novel focuses on the ongoing war between science and religion for centuries.
The thing i absolutely loved about the book is that it's all based on facts.
It gives an exciting introduction to the world of conspiracy theories (before this book i had never even heard of Illuminati lol).😂🙈
This book is so exhilarating, thrilling, and imaginative! I love how the author has mixed scientific and religious elements perfectly.

I think you should definitely read it if you're a begginer. This book will definitely get you into mystery-thriller books. So if you're looking for something like that then i would highly recommend reading Angels and Demons.
I'm giving it a 4.8 star rating because some of the plot twists are so predictable- though it didn't stop me from reading and was still very exhilarating.
So yeah, apart from that the book is a real page turner!

Also, the movie based on the book sucks! I don’t think this counts as a con for the book, but still..
Don’t watch it. Especially not if you haven't read the book yet because then you might not even want to read it.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Hate crime, Torture, Violence, Blood, Murder, and Sexual harassment

laurajordensharris's review against another edition

adventurous dark informative mysterious tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Body horror, Chronic illness, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Genocide, Gore, Gun violence, Hate crime, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Torture, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Kidnapping, Grief, Religious bigotry, Death of parent, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Abandonment, War, and Injury/Injury detail

malignant_gnome's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Chronic illness, Death, Gore, Physical abuse, Sexism, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Torture, Violence, Blood, Islamophobia, Kidnapping, Religious bigotry, and Murder

Minor: Rape

cocacolor's review against another edition

adventurous medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

The breadth and depth of architectural and physical detail is good but the science is iffy, which normally wouldn't be much of a downside except that the author clearly went to a lot of effort to make it as accurate as possible--I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume it might've seemed more accurate twenty years ago. I'd say the twists were pretty predictable, except that somehow, even though I suspected

the camerlengo ever since Chartrand mentioned the walk they'd taken together, Janus's true identity still caught me off guard because the author had spent the last hundreds or so pages advancing the Kohler-is-Janus theory

, so kudos for that. Vittoria is, unexpectedly, a better developed and more capable character than Langdon, so ally points for that--and then a whole slew of them taken off because the Hassassin and Kohler are, respectively, absolutely skin-crawling racist, Islamaphobic, and ableist stereotypes. On a pure narrative level, it's mediocre; in its representation, worse than mediocre. Also, more malapropisms than a Bush speech. There have to be better "solve-conspiracy-puzzle" thrillers out there. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Death, Racism, Sexual violence, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Islamophobia, Religious bigotry, Death of parent, Murder, and Fire/Fire injury

Moderate: Racial slurs