Having seen A&D, having both read and seen DVC and having heard about the literary abortion that is The Lost Symbol, I think I've figured out Dan Brown's modus operandi: pseudo-intellectual religiosity.
DVC has been slightly undone by its source material (the lore behind it is all based on a single work, which has been widely discredited--the Priory of Scion is somewhat infamous as a scam) and the quality of the writing. Brown can put together a compelling story, but his sentence structure is a little less rigid (A. O. Scott's review of the DVC film aped Brown's writing style, which I found high-larious!).
But in Brown's defense, these are airport novels, designed to be read in a quick stretch and to keep your rapt attention for that whole time. It's for this reason that they don't seem to breathe--the stories take place in twenty-four hour spans. I found this mildly ludicrous in DVC, especially given all the country-hopping they did: from France to Switzerland to England, to Scotland, and back to France in a day.
All that said, the point Brown keeps coming to is the same. There's an evil plot rooted in some sort of near-ancient lore that has an awful lot to do with the Bible. It means that the Bible is not what you think, but the cynic Robert Langdon keeps finding out that Bible was not what he thinks either. In short, the mystery's of God are mysterious and God-like. Which I find a little trite, but there you have it.
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DVC has been slightly undone by its source material (the lore behind it is all based on a single work, which has been widely discredited--the Priory of Scion is somewhat infamous as a scam) and the quality of the writing. Brown can put together a compelling story, but his sentence structure is a little less rigid (A. O. Scott's review of the DVC film aped Brown's writing style, which I found high-larious!).
But in Brown's defense, these are airport novels, designed to be read in a quick stretch and to keep your rapt attention for that whole time. It's for this reason that they don't seem to breathe--the stories take place in twenty-four hour spans. I found this mildly ludicrous in DVC, especially given all the country-hopping they did: from France to Switzerland to England, to Scotland, and back to France in a day.
All that said, the point Brown keeps coming to is the same. There's an evil plot rooted in some sort of near-ancient lore that has an awful lot to do with the Bible. It means that the Bible is not what you think, but the cynic Robert Langdon keeps finding out that Bible was not what he thinks either. In short, the mystery's of God are mysterious and God-like. Which I find a little trite, but there you have it.
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