I read this a while ago when I in jured my head a couple of months ago, but it's taken me a while to get round and blog a review of it. This is the prequel if you like in that it was written before The Dan Vinci Code and features the same lead character, Havard Don Robert Langdon (to be played in an upcomingmove by Harrison Ford if the rumour mill is true).
Like TDVC it features a religious conspiracy and the action again takes place over a twenty four hour period. It also contains plenty of laughable interchangeable dialogue which could easily be said by pretty much any character in the book. However, once again, this doesn't really matter - the book rips along at great pace with plenty of twists and turns which are enough for you to overlook Brown's literary shortcomings.
It also helps that he sets his stories in great locations and paints these very well. Angels & Demons is predominantly set in Rome, and just as Brown did with several London locations in TDVC, he's made me want to go to Rome if nothing else. The Italian tourist board should be very proud of him.
The only downside is that his editor didn't persuade him to ditch the last hundred pages as they're superfluous and self indulgent. Shame really, until then there was little to fault for a book of this type.
I'd certainly recommend reading it - but just skip the last bit, or read through it like an airport novel and that way the page turning brilliance of the first four hundred pages wont be tainted.
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