Angels and Demons

Betcha didn't think you'd hear from me on this blog, did you? Well I do read. Occasionally. When I have time. And a good book. And this happened to be one such good book.

Despite what movie watchers may think, this is the first in a trilogy by Dan Brown (he has written two other books that I know of outside of the Robert Langdon series). It was made into a movie after the more famous movie, The DaVinci Code, but it was actually written first. The series is one of those where the plots technically did happen in a certain order, but it doesn't matter in what order you read them; they aren't connected in any way except that Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor and symbologist, is the main character in all of them.

This suspense-filled series ties fiction into many things that are quite historically accurate (okay, I didn't independently verify that it's all accurate, but Brown has short notes at the beginning of the books that tell the reader which organizations/events/traditions actually exist).

In Angels and Demons, Langdon is in Rome (and The Vatican City), chasing down the bad guys to try to stop the murderous intentions of the Illuminati, a science-based brotherhood that originated long ago to keep scientific discoveries protected from the Catholic Church, which tended not to be so accepting of worldly knowledge back in the day. Centuries after the church put great scientists and thinkers to death for their works, the Illuminati want revenge.

I usually only had time to read it a little bit at a time before bed, and there were some nights when I stayed up later than I should have because the book was so good. Whitney read it right after I did, and it was really fun to share our thought processes throughout the plot. Plus, she loves it because she's been to most of the places where things happen in the book.