Reviews with content warning for Suicide - Illuminati

Reviews tagging 'Suicide'

Illuminati by Dan Brown

15 reviews

m4rtt4's review against another edition

adventurous challenging 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? It's complicated

3.75

I admire Dan Brown for his ability to create these kinds of page-turners full of interesting facts. I'm not a huge fan of action books or movies where everything is centered around villains and violence, but all the nerdy stuff in this book surely made up for it :)

On the other hand, I really dislike Brown's way of writing characters, everything from creating backstories interesting enough to describing them in present day and action. I mean, of course Robert Langdon is as perfect as Brown's wanted him to be (bet he created him as a perfect version of his own self), but oh god, ARE THERE MORE TO FEMALE CHARACTERS THAN THEIR BODIES? Obviously there should be, but I wouldn't recommend using Brown's books as a guide to writing women. Or, tbh, any other characters either, so very one-dimensional, stereotypical, (and even racist) he made them all (apart from Langdon ofc). Especially the assassin — his actions and overall villain-ness didn't frustrate me nowhere near as his personality was written to be.

So, overall the story was adventurous and entertaining if you just treat most of the chacters as "necessary implementers to the required actions" and ignore their personal traits. Wouldn't recommend if you dislike science and/or history.

Content Warnings