Book Review: Angels and Demons

“Faith is universal. Our specific methods for understanding it are arbitrary. Some of us pray to Jesus, some of us go to Mecca, some of us study subatomic particles. In the end we are all just searching for truth, that which is greater than ourselves.”

– Angels and demons

Angels and Demons is the novel that introduces the most iconic fictional character, Robert Langdon. Though this character is famous for worldwide massive bestselling novel Da Vinci code. This book is predecessor of that masterpiece.

Angels and Demons is a bestselling mystery-thriller novel by Dan brown published in 2000.

It is the best page turner and I would recommend it for new readers or the people who love thriller/mystery.

Plot :

The book is majorly set in Rome, CERN and Vatican City in a single day time frame, and revolves around things like conspiracy theory of Illuminati (A secret brotherhood which has been extinct for nearly 400 years) and catholic church, Ancient history and symbology.

The protagonist of the novel is Robert Langdon who is a professor of symbology at Harvard university and Vittoria Vetra a scientist at CERN (A European organization for nuclear research in Geneva)

The novel start with a chilling murder of Leonardo Vetra a leading scientist at CERN with an ambigram(Design of word when read from different direction is same.)ILUMINATI branded into his chest.

“Nothing captures human interest more than human tragedy.”
― Dan Brown, Angels & Demons

At this time Maximilian Kohler director of CERN contacts Robert Langdon who is expert in Illuminati to confirm the authenticity of the symbol and find any lead possible.

Eventually they find that an antimatter canister which the scientist Leonardo Vetra had been working was stolen from the Lab of CERN which is a deadly time bomb counting down till midnight.
A single gram of antimatter contains energy of 20 kiloton nuclear bomb-the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Parallelly the canister of antimatter is found to be located somewhere within the walls of Vatican city where the most renowned papal elections (head of Roman Catholic church) is taking place and cardinals from around the world are present for the conclave and also on top of it four preferiti (preferred cardinal for papacy) of the conclave are kidnapped.

Langdon and his companions are set to find the preferriti by deciphering the ancient puzzle set by the illuminati against the time bomb counting down towards the destruction of Vatican.

REVIEW:

The novel is a page turner and it presents you with so many facts on ancient history, science and Religion. People who love history, religion and science will find it damn interesting though in few places it may be factually incorrect this book will never fail to entertain you.

My favorite part was Science Vs Religion arguments and how the story takes you to various significant sites around the Rome and Vatican city. Though certain aspects in the story seems utter impossibility, the overall read was absolute feast and kept me in edge of the seat throughout the novel.

MOVIE ADAPTATION

The movie was released in 2009.The choice of Tom Hank as Robert Langdon was so apt and his acting was good.

So many powerful spots, twist and conflicts were removed from the novel. I feel that the movie did not do justice to the novel. The plot was changed to a greater extent in the movie and it was rushed, I know all details in the book cannot be incorporated into a 2hr movie.

I would recommend to read the book first before watching the movie.

decided yet to give this book a try ?…. leave your comment below!!!… I will really appreciate it!!.

#K&S