Hello everyone!
It's book talk time again, and with my e-reader situation still the same as it was around Christmas (aka alas, poor Kobo, I knew thee well), I have to resort to different tactics if I want to read certain books.
Luckily, however, some of them are pretty easy to grab right off my bookshelf.
Which reminds me that I should at some point continue with my bookshelf tour, but maybe not right now. Maybe I'll do it in May though?
Anyway, for this particular blog post I've decided to go with the tried-and-tested trope of an author who people love and hate at apparently the same time. For me, I tend to enjoy reading his books because I don't necessarily go into the reality of it all and just ... you know, read it for the enjoyment of reading.
I'm talking about Dan Brown, of course.
Brown is one of those authors that just LOVE stirring up the pot, and his book Angels & Demons is definitely no exception.
My other Brown-related blog posts can be found at the bottom of this page, as per usual.
Now, Angels & Demons is the book which introduces us to Robert Langdon, Harvard professor extraordinaire who tends to get into more trouble than his job is worth, but some people just have that kind of thing happen to them.
The book is chronologically the first in the acclaimed Langdon series (of which there are currently five novels written and published) , though it wasn't necessarily PUBLISHED first, I don't think.
Then again, here in Slovenia the publishing dates are slightly different to the ones across the pond.
Anyway, back to Langdon!
He's happily dreaming away about a woman he's trying to catch up with somewhere in Egypt when he's rudely woken by the telephone in his house. At first thinking it's a hoax (it's pretty much the middle of the night) when the guy on the other end starts talking about the Illuminati, Langdon changes his mind when he sees the photo of a body gruesomely branded.
He is immediately flown over to Switzerland's CERN, where he is welcomed by director Kohler who explains that the deceased is one Leonardo Vetra, a brilliant scientist and also a priest who was apparently working on something top-secret.
The arrival of the man's daughter, Vittoria, reveals that the pair were working on recreating the Big Bang - making both matter and antimatter in the process.
But the highly volatile and unstable antimatter (of which a small drop had been produced in CERN's laboratory) has since been stolen, and Leonardo Vetra murdered as a result.
Unfortunately, the bad news doesn't end there.
The antimatter has been placed somewhere in the Vatican.
Which is bad enough in itself, but right that day, the Conclave is set to begin, the ancient ritual by which the Church will elect its new pope.
So, what do Robert and Vittoria do?
Off to Rome they go!
They are initially met with both scorn and eye rolling from Olivetti, the chief of the Swiss Guard, but once Vittoria manages to contact the Camerlengo, aka the man who is currently holding power before the new Pope is elected, all this changes.
He immediately orders an extensive search for the antimatter, but the organisation is kind of dealing with another problem right at that moment:
four cardinals have gone missing.
Not only that, they are il preferiti, the preferred candidades out of which the new Pope should be elected.
So, you know, Langdon has to find the antimatter before it goes boom, taking with it pretty much the Vatican and probably a big chunk of Rome, and if possible also find the cardinals who, as revealed on a BBC live report, have been kidnapped and will be 'sacrificed at the altars of science' each hour until midnight.
No pressure.
Thinking he knows where the answer can be found, Langdon asks - and finally gets - permission to enter the Vatican vaults where they hold pretty much all the treasures the world thinks they do (and probably many more), and he and Vittoria go through the works of Galileo to find the beginning of this road they have to follow to the altars.
Unfortunately, they get the first clue wrong: thinking it points to the resting place of Raphael (which is the Pantheon), they're too late to get to the ACTUAL altar which is at a different location entirely - and from where they can continue following the clues left by the brilliant Bernini.
They're too late to rescue the poor cardinal who suffocates to death with earth stuffed into his mouth (and he's branded with the moniker 'earth' on his chest, as one of the four elements), but the race is now on as Langdon realises the path to knowledge CAN be followed.
The next element being air, they rush back to St. Peter's square, but can again do nothing to prevent the horrible death of the second cardinal (whose lungs had been punctured to represent 'air').
They're running out of time with both the cardinals AND the antimatter, but Langdon is nothing if not persistent.
With the world now in the know about what's happening - and people gathering in the square because, you know, when someone threatens to throw it into space with a bomb that's what you do - the race is on to try and save at least the most important of the cardinals, Baggia, who would POSSIBLY become the new Pope, if elected.
Langdon unfortunately loses two allies during the mad dash to the third element, 'fire': not only does the assassin kill off Olivetti, he also abducts Vittoria and takes her to the sacred church of the Illuminati while he goes to finish the job.
More determined than ever - and also because he's attracted to Vittoria and wants to rescue her - Langdon hustles to the last stop, one of Bernini's fountains, where he actually comes face-to-face with the assassin and almost manages to rescue Baggia from drowning ('water'), but has to admit defeat and pretends to drown himself to escape the brutal killer.
Then he unravels the last clue and hurries to the Castel Sant'Angelo, where he and Vittoria jointly manage to defeat the assassin.
But ...
The four preferiti are dead, and the antimatter is still nowhere to be found.
A Good Samaritan is supposedly going to arrive to save everyone, but Vittoria and Langdon both fear that'll just hasten everything, worried the conspiracy reaches even further. When they see Kohler arrive they're shocked - more so as the Camerlengo accuses Kohler of being Illuminati and Olivetti's second, Rocher, gets killed in the after-fire.
A dying Kohler gives a small camera to Langdon before ultimately passing, but he's got other things on his mind.
A branded Camerlengo rushes out into the square first, then down to Peter's grave where he grabs the antimatter which had been there all along. He and Langdon jump into a helicopter to take it to the skies, apparently listening to the voice of God, but while the man of the Church jumps out with a parachute, leaving Langdon to his fate, Langdon jumps out with something close to a parachute - and barely manages to survive.
He also gets a chance to listen to the recording made by Kohler, and before the Camerlengo can be confirmed into any kind of position of power (the cardinals had been arguing to elect him Pope), they receive an actual transmission from the camera and see that it was actually the Camerlengo who was behind everything and set it all in motion.
And why?
Well, because his mother always taught him that the promise to God was everything. And while he was loyal to the old pope, his loyalties shifted to madness when he learned the Pope had had a child. So he was the one who overdosed the old man with his medicine (proven by Vittoria because the Pope's tongue was black) and then brought out the old Illuminati brands and the threat, killing Leonardo Vetra because science was too dangerous in the matter/antimatter thing. Unfortunately however he didn't have all the facts: as revealed by the cardinal who IS later elected pope, his predecessor did in fact have a child, having fallen in love with a young nun while still a priest. Neither of them wanted to break their promise to God, but loved each other too much to give up their love, so through science (artificial insemination) the woman conceived and gave birth to none other than the Camerlengo.
This revelation pushes him over the edge and he sets himself on fire in front of the cameras.
Later, the BBC reporter finds a professor who admits that, by an ancient law in which the cardinals unanimously and without reservations shout the name of their preferred candidate, they elect a pope. In this case, the Camerlengo had actually held the office he so wanted for a brief moment, before his urn was placed in the coffin of his biological and spiritual father.
As for Langdon? Well, he and Vittoria went to a hotel to relax, agreeing not to tell the absolute truth to the world, and Langdon was given the fabled Illuminati diamond (an iron brand) to be in his possession until his death.
And then, as heroes do, he got due payment by forgetting the real world for a while with Vittoria.
A thrilling chase from start to finish, and actually happening in about twenty-four hours if not less, this is a book for those who want stunning revelations, a bit of 'wait, what?' and a whole dose of Robert Langdon who's an interesting hero to follow because he's not quite the classic image of what we imagine heroes to be.
I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a couple of hours of mystery and fun!
xx
*image not mine
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