A Book Review-and Not a Very Good One at That--the Book, Not the Review

Ok, pretty much everyone by now has probably decided whether they are going to read it or not, and if they are going to read it, probably have already done so. But I was curious about all the hoopla, so I recently finished The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown.

To me, it was like a mediocre action film that had some really cool things happening, but in the end is unsatisfying and not tremendously good. The book is a page turner, but it is also a single read.

Now about all the controversy. Luckily, Dan is so pathetic on his history that it is almost completely non-threatening. He attempts to blur the line between fiction and fact by throwing enough fact in there to try to make one consider the rest. He states three facts at the beginning of the book: The Priory of Scion has been around since 1099; the National Headquarters of Opus Dei is on Lexington Street in New York City; and that all the descriptions of art, architecture, documents, and secret rituals are accurate. I only buy the second one. I really don't know enough about the Priory or art or design or rituals to say anything about them, but the documents thing is bunk. Unless he is talking about the something like 3 that exists that he mentions while the rest are made up. It makes sense that Opus Dei may have a building located in New York.

The book is so historically dishonest, to the point it offended me (if you recall from a recent previous post, I do not get offended easily). The main problem I have with that is it is obviously not trying to be historical fiction, or anything that is simply a story that overreaches the bounds of reality to make up another world to tell a great story, but he basically makes up his own historical reality and tries to sell it as fact. And the tactics he uses to do so is the very same thing that he tries to pin on the Catholic church, mainly, rewriting history to sell an agenda and keep its power. Dan has done exactly that in writing this book. I suspect he is trying to sell an "all religions are equal" and that "Christianity is just a metaphor" to further his own religious beliefs. If you are going to claim something is false, please have your facts right, it makes it much more challenging.

The thing I scoffed at the most in the book is when he mentions in chapter 74 that early Jewish tradition involved ritualistic sex in the temple and that the Holy of Holies housed God and His powerful female equal named Shekinah. And that YHWH (Yahweh) is derived from Jehovah and an early name for Eve, Havah. Jehovah is a combination in Hebrew of Yahweh and Adonai. That one made me laugh. You might want to check with Jewish history and see if there is a massive departure from what they say the Torah is and the Catholic Church says the Old Testament is. Or did they all brainwash Jewish people or something?

So my review is basically this, it is a page turner, but it is ridiculous in history and plot. If there is any truth to it, the Catholic church has pulled the greatest prank of all time, and Jews are in on it. As far as people who buy what Dan is proposing? They will soon read another book and be convinced of something totally different, because they are not people who check their facts and are gullible.

But at least now I will be prepared to answer anybody who brings up an honest question about it who knows nothing about history, so the read was valuable for that, and at least it was not boring.

I am curious to see how the movie interprets the book.

--written to Monty Python-"The Album of the Soundtrack of the Film of Monty Python and the Holy Grail" which is much more historically accurate The DaVinci Code is.