As a precursor, I have not seen the movie yet. I picked up the Book “Angels and Demons” after reading a book recommended to me by a co-worker named Teresa.

The book I read before Angels and Demons was called Deception Point. You followed the story of an NRO agent who was brought in by the President of the United States to help verify some information about a meteorite. As a reader, you knew there was going to be something really special about this meteorite because she knows nothing about meteorites.

She gets flown to the North Pole with a (not surprisingly) attractive man who later becomes the (obvious) love interest. The book is sparked with comedic relief in several ways, most notably by an old pal of the secondary main character, who is, if I recall correctly, a physicist. One of the premiere in his field.

If you’ve never heard of the Milne Shelf, (and I doubt most people have; I was vaguely familiar with it when I read the name in the book,) I think you’ll like the setting. While the book is about United States citizens, I believe most of the book, (Certainly the longest period of time for the characters,) is spent in Canada.

There are a few twists added into this book that I appreciated. One thing Dan Brown does when writing, (or, at least, what he did in the two books I’ve read that he wrote,) is he makes the story take place over the course of one or two days. It lends a sort of fast-paced excitement to books that are 500 to 800 pages each.

The Main Character is the daughter of The President’s primary foe for the upcoming election. The entire story weaves in such a way that the balance of who seems to be ‘winning’ shifts several times.

The ending wasn’t a real surprise to me. By the time we got to it, there were only a handful of characters that could have been holding the playing cards. In the two books I’ve read by Dan Brown, I’ve noticed that, whoever the Characters think is responsible for what is going on are not responsible at all, and are usually innocent. In this book, he managed to throw suspicion around to everyone and make it so that you wouldn’t know, for certain, who was responsible until they revealed themselves. It was very well done. I recommend Deception Point to anyone who knows how to read.

Insofar as Angels and Demons go, we get to follow the Illustrious and brilliant Mr. Robert Langdon on a trip through Rome.

The detail and intricacies of this story, including the pieces of artwork that were put into the book, (They are Ambigrams, for those who are curious.) are all well done. I was surprised at how deep the plot went, and I was actually expecting a similar ending to Deception Point when I was nearing the end of the book.

I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered that this was not the case. To be honest, the “bad guy” wasn’t that big of a surprise to me, it was, instead, the motivation behind that particular “bad guy”, and how tragically he had fallen from the grace of his own God, whom he was trying to serve, that astounded me. In a few pages, the entire book seemed to change and I was pleased with the overall story.

I can safely say, after having read two of Dan Brown’s books, I will be pleased to read more of them. Angels and Demons netted him another fan.