Reviews with content warning for Ableism - The Da Vinci Code

Reviews tagging 'Ableism'

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

12 reviews

mattiedancer's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

Writing: 4⭐️/5

The writing falters at some points, but shines at others. I particularly loved how Brown writes about history and art in a way that blends fiction and fact seamlessly. I also enjoyed the flow of action, which was mostly easy to follow. What I liked less was the reliance on some sexist tropes of female characters. And, while the writing was functional, it definitely fell into some tropes for the favour of time and ease of reading. Not necessarily a bad thing, but definitely not the strongest writing characteristic.

Characters: 3.5⭐️/5

Alright, so I get it. Robert Langdon is very, very badass. But he doesn’t know it. It was both fun and not fun at times to follow him, but I did overall enjoy him and most of our main characters. I felt less love towards the suddenness at which Robert and Sophie found themselves romantically involved. I also didn’t buy into Sophie’s reason for essentially estranging herself from her grandfather. It felt like something that would’ve been silly to keep going for that long.

Plot: 4.25⭐️/5

Okay, so the plot is incredibly... fun? That seems like the wrong word, but here we are. I enjoyed reading the plot, despite its many ups and downs and some completely unbelievable sections. But I was okay with employing some suspension of disbelief (like the many many hours of zero sleep) to enjoy the engaging, ever-changing, ever-moving plot.

Who Should Read This Book?

Fans of mystery novels
Fans of thrillers
Fans of art history who like mysteries/thrillers

Content Warnings?

Murder, death, self-harm, gun violence, ableism, blood, death of parent, car accident, violence, stalking, gaslighting, emotional abuse, religious bigotry, torture, kidnapping, confinement

Post-Reading Rating: 4.75⭐️/5

Well, that was fun.

Final Rating: 3.75⭐️/5

Content Warnings

lycheeteareads's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

Content Warnings

nota_candycaine's review

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adventurous mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

Content Warnings

liri_reads's review against another edition

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adventurous informative mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

Content Warnings

woweewhoa's review

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adventurous mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

EDIT: Okay with time this book gets worse in my brain so I'm lowering the rating. Sorry Davinci Code Likers for lowering the overall rating some more.

Okay, so, I listened to the audiobook of this within a few days, and I gotta say, this book, while going at a rapid pace, is way too long. If I was editing this? I would take out a bunch of the lecture scenes, and honestly, made Robert a much more minor protag than he was and make Sophie more central. She is the main character, but because we start with Robert, and he's the guy!!(apparently?), we gotta go into his brain a Lot. I think this book would've been more interesting and also more compelling if it mainly focused on Sophie. Also, the lecture parts of this book were lame!

On a different note, this book is super gender essentialist, which is also partially why I put transphobia in the moderate content warning. There's a couple mentions of 'girls with dicks' said in a frankly derogatory manner as well, which, was out of left field honestly and did make me feel uncomfortable. Also, as a trans man, as this book really got into the nitty gritty of the 'Sacred Feminine' and associating that with the womb and vagina, and let me tell you, I sure started feeling really dysphoric listening to this book. Also, even though the book Does mention Da Vinci possibly being gay, it really boils down to 'men and women gotta be together for the '''''balance''''''' of the world' which. hm. Kinda saying heterosexuality is inherent to being which. Well, is wrong. Just at point blank.

When the book was Not super focusing on that stuff, its a fun romp. Very very stupid at times with how to solve the puzzles and the mysteries involved. But it was fun in the way stupid stuff goes, and honestly a lot of the stuff I was hearing would make me double take because of how dumb it was. That was great.

If your gonna read this book, I'd recommend the audiobook as narrated by Paul Michael, because he did a great job with all the accents and didn't make that aspect sound silly at all. It helped kinda place people too, and the voices of all the characters was very well realized because of that! I liked hearing conversations between the characters because you'd get an American accent, then a Brooklyn accent(? this guy shows up only a couple times but I liked hearing him when he showed up bc of this choice), British, French, Scottish... very fun!

Content Warnings

librariangeorgia's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

I blitzed through this book. Definitely my favourite in the series so far.

I really enjoyed this book. I liked the code-breaking elements to it, very interesting and clever.

I’m not sure whether any of it is historically accurate but I don’t really care about that - it’s a well written book that kept me gripped all the way though.

Content Warnings

arthur_ant18's review against another edition

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adventurous informative mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.5

Content Warnings

polemos's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

Content Warnings

bluejayreads's review

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adventurous fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

I picked this up not because I particularly wanted to read this book (thrillers aren’t usually my thing), but because I got in trouble in high school for looking at this in the library because “it’s heretical” and I was in the mood for a little heresy.

I want to preface this by saying I do not hate this book. A lot of this review is going to sound critical, but this book is a perfectly acceptable reading experience.

That said, this whole book has the feeling of being written to be a bestseller – like those big-budget action movies that are more about cool stunts and firey explosions than plot and characters. This book is focused much more on the fact that there is a Big Secret, this secret is shocking and titillating, and the protagonists have to solve riddles, visit historical sites, and dodge antagonists to find it. Everything else is incidental.

The two protagonists – Robert and Sophie – are basic stock characters. Robert is a middle-aged bachelor professor whose academic expertise is in something relevant to the riddles. Sophie is beautiful and sexy and also has some knowledge necessary to solve the riddles but she needs to be taught the details by the more knowledgeable Robert. Of course there’s romantic tension between the two, which is absolutely bizarre because at the beginning of the book Robert takes a minute to miss a woman who I assume was Sophie’s counterpart from the first Robert Langdon book, but then she is entirely forgotten in favor of the smart (but not as smart as Robert) and sexy Sophie.

If you think about it too hard, the plot is very contrived. Yes, it’s supposed to be difficult to get at the Big Secret in order to keep it safe, but beneath of all the Dangerous To The Church and We Are In Danger and other adult trappings put over it, it’s basically one of those scavenger hunts you give to kids with riddles to solve to take them to a location and get a new riddle until they find their birthday present at the end. It’s not even subtle – the book draws the parallel explicitly. It wasn’t boring to read, but looking back a few days after reading you realize there’s no real substance to it.

The antagonists were really underutilized in this story. Religious fanaticism is a fascinating force and could have thrown an interesting, unpredictable element into the plot. But there was only one actual religious fanatic among the ranks of the antagonists, and he was unquestionably and undeviatingly obedient to to the larger forces, who were motivated by comparatively boring stuff like money and power. It kept him from introducing a chaotic element into the story which I would have loved to see. Religious fanatics could have made fantastic opponents in this book but Dan went for the boring stuff instead.

And after all that, I really don’t think revealing the Big Secret would be as damaging to the church as everybody in this book seems to think. Maybe it’s different for Catholics, but grew up among Protestants who regularly and repeatedly ignore, explain away, or outright deny facts that they don’t like. (I can guarantee you’ve seen this in action with all the covid denialism in the news right now.) Archaeologists could literally exhume Jesus’s body with signed agreements between Paul and Peter that Jesus never rose from the dead and they were gonna make up a religion around him, and most Christians would call it fake and somebody would write a bestselling book pretending to be an archaeologist and “disproving” the find. The contents of The Da Vinci Code‘s Big Secret are nowhere near enough to shake the faith of almost every Christian I know.

The amateur religious scholar in me also wants to point out that the noncanonical gospel quotes used in support of the Big Secret’s realism were either mistranslated to the point of paraphrase (Gospel of Philip) or Dan filled in gaps in the existing manuscripts with his own words to fit the idea (Gospel of Mary). And he completely made up translations and origins of words to make the Big Secret sound more plausible. Do not read this book to learn anything about the actual religious history or archaeology behind the ideas because almost everything in this book is wrong.

I can absolutely see why this became a bestseller. The Big Secret is titillating and sacrilegious and given just enough plausibility to seem possible in the real world, and the characters work just fine as vehicles to steer the reader through a large-scale scavenger hunt with danger and action and religious symbolism leading to big conspiracies and secrets. It’s a fairly enjoyable book. But it lacks any real substance. It has nothing to give it depth or meaning, very little to give it interest beyond the sacrilegious nature of the Big Secret, and nothing to make it worth rereading. It’s the kind of book that one would describe as “a diversion” or “highly marketable” – the kind of thing that will sell, and is perfectly readable as a bit of fluff, but lacks anything worth sinking your teeth into.

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sophiewright's review

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No

4.5

Content Warnings

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