book review: The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

First and foremost, i'm actually quite hesitant to write a review for this book. I'm scared my review won't do the book justice, because of how awesome it is. But yeah, let's just try, shall we?

I've always heard of Dan Brown and i see his books everywhere, but i've never had the thought of giving the books a try. A friend of mine had a copy so i borrowed it to see what all the hype was about. The hype is mostly among my debate friends though, not the typical teenage bookworms on Instagram who only reads young adult books(hehe myself included. It's not an insult btw). I kept my expectations low to avoid disappointment, of course.

I'm not gonna give any synopsis for this book because i simply don't know how to do it without spoiling any suspense in case you're planning to read it too. I read the book without any reviews or prior knowledge about what it's about, so i guess that's one of the reasons why i quite enjoyed it. The main thing you might need to know is that it discusses a lot of things about Christianity and its history. By the end of the book, i had stuck 19 page markers(those colourful sticker things) in the book to mark the parts with mind-blowing information that i planned to research about later. I was told that a lot of the facts in the book are true(apart from the plot and all), so that made the adventure even more spectacular.

Perhaps it's because i've lived long enough and have had enough experiences and encounters in life, but it was fervently easy for me to follow and understand the facts mentioned in the book because i had some basic knowledge about quite a number of the things mentioned in it. For example, when i was little i had the privilege to visit Paris, and i think i remember going to The Louvre. When it was described in the book, it wasn't difficult to imagine the scenes in my head. I've also had a lot of experience going to art museums when i was in Australia, so i had a brief idea of what the museum and paintings discussed in the book were like. I think i've even seen the Mona Lisa painting, but i'll have to ask my parents about that to reconfirm.

I guess i read this book at the right time. If i had read it when i was younger, i wouldn't have understood a lot of things. I'd have to know who Leonardo Da Vinci was, what the heck cryptology, symbology, the Fibonacci sequence, the prime meridian, paganism, the Holy Grail, the Vatican Church is and a lot of other things. I probably wouldn't really have understood the book at that time, so reading it at this age was a good decision. Also, i think the book does have some mature content in it. It does appear to be quite gruesome and direct in some of its descriptions, and it does get a little creepy sometimes.

Oh yeah, and you probably have to be mature enough to be able to differentiate between what's not correct based on your religion and what is. This can be easy enough when reading fantasy books like Harry Potter and Percy Jackson and stuff, but for thrillers like these it could be hard because it doesn't have those magical elements. You gotta remember that the author has his own sets of beliefs that may not be consistent with yours, and he has the power to convey his/others' interpretation of history and religion to you. So yeah, make sure you understand that first before reading books like these, or at least do some research regarding the things you discover.

All in all, the book was the first of its genre that i had read, and i was surprised to find out that i actually enjoyed learning about things related to reality from a fiction book. If someone had given me a whole article explaining about the factual things mentioned in the book, i probably would have fallen asleep a few pages in. But to read information in a story form and actually get amazed by it was fantastic. I spent about 2 weeks reading this because i was busy, but had fun going through the adventure. I hope i'll get to read more good books like this soon. I'm rating it 4.8 out of 5. Robert Langdon is awesome. Oh by the way i watched the movie right afterwards, and the book is a hundred times better, hands down.