Wednesday, March 10, 2004
Book Review: The Da Vinci Code
| Am I the last one to read this one? I just finished Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. I picked up a copy for cheap at Costco about six months ago and it's been waiting on the Media Queue ever since. Some prodding from my Mother-in-Law pushed it to the top and I finished it in five days (very fast since I don't have a lot of time to read).
I went into it very leery - I very rarely read bestsellers. This is due to the fact that I read mostly science fiction. Surprisingly enough I was quite comfortable with The Da Vinci Code because it is secretly a science fiction novel. It's an example of a particular branch of science fiction know as "alternative history." In any alternative history story the author presents historical facts as we now know them, but at some point in the past he indicate a break point which causes the history we know to branch off from their intended course. A great example of this kind of story is Harry Turtledove's Guns of the South, where a group with access to a time machine sends AK-47 assault rifles to General Lee in 1862 so that the South wins the American Civil War. The difference with The Da Vinci Code is that we a living the alternative history with the break point break point being the meetings called by the Roman Emperor Constantine where the then present Christian church is hijacked and the (false) trappings of the modern Catholic church are put in place. The book is essentially the story of a group trying to put right this wrong. It is an enjoyable, page-turning story that is fairly well written. It is talky is spots - but a lot of the talk is the fascinating and controversial assertions that are certainly the reason for the book's wild popularity. As for the "truth" of the book…well it's a novel. The real question is how much of the assertions about changes to the nature of Christianity are true. Just a brief Google search leads to plenty of sources debunking The Da Vinci code. You know what? I'm recommending this book as a good story. Anyway, I can now join the water cooler conversations. |
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