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"What is history, but a fable agreed upon?" Having recently heard that the Catholic Church is up in arms about The Da Vinci Code, I thought it was about time I had a go at reading a book that has stayed atop the best seller lists for weeks all over the world and has generated tons of controversy. My consensus is that The Da Vinci Code isn't really that good, although the novel probably works better as a treatise on the history of religious fervor than as a fully-fledged suspense thriller. Author, Dan brown has obviously done his homework and the book boasts some exhaustive and extremely informative research, but the novel is structurally a mess; it's full of small, diminutive chapters that don't contribute in any significant way to the movement of the plot, and is crammed with cardboard characters that are so one-dimensional that this reader suspected their sole purpose was merely to act as a sounding board for all the historical background. [..]The Da Vinci Code is an interesting and engaging read, providing one doesn't take too much of it seriously. The characters in The Da Vinci Code are constantly moving around in a world where ancient secrets are repeatedly rising to the surface, and where forgotten histories are relentlessly emerging from the shadows. Robert Langdon is a Harvard Professor of art history and religious symbology who has spent his life exploring the hidden interconnectivity of disparate problems and ideologies. Langdon views the world as a web of profoundly intertwined histories and events, and he is an absolute gold mine of information about the Catholic Church, pagan religions, and religious mysteries. As The Da Vinci Code begins, he is in Paris to give a speech and to meet with Jacques Saunière, the curator of the Louvre. Robert has never met Saunière and is not sure why his wants to meet him. Unfortunately, Saunière is suddenly murdered in the Grand Hall of the Louvre - his body discovered naked and in a position resembling the five stars of the pentagram. [...] All the characters are after the secrets that have been kept hidden by a secret society called the Priory of Sion, of which Saunière was a member. Sophie and Robert must race against time to discover the symbolism of the clues that the curator left behind, such as the pentacle, The Vitruvian Man, Da Vinci, the goddess, and the Fibonacci sequence - they're a coherent symbolic set all inextricably tied. On the way, the couple, and the reader, discovers that the main lesson to be learned is that "connections may be invisible, but they are always there, buried beneath the surface." I liked the way Dan Brown explores history and talks about the fact that history is always written by "the winners." When two cultures clash, the loser is obliterated, and the winner writes the history books - books, which glorify their own cause and disparage the conquered foe. The stories you believe become a matter of faith and personal exploration, which probably explains why the Catholic Church has constantly had such a maniacal grip on the world. When Silas, the albino Opus Dei monk who murders by instruction from The Teacher comments that "for two millennia, Christian soldiers had defended their faith against those who tried to displace it" The reader gets the feeling that he is pretty much telling it like it is. Mike Leonard March 05.