WHY So late review…I was actually BUSY in completing my THE DA VINCI CODE…
In my opinion…
Dan Brown is a thief…
He stole my words! Man! How could he? I didn’t expect from a man like him. The title of his bestseller ‘THE DA VINCI CODE” exactly matches with the name of an event that I organized during my college fests (my reason for which I was busy)………ok here comes the twist…all the above mentioned things are true except that its the other way around. I am the thief in this case (no copyrights issues…just inspired from his work…hee hee).
As soon as I finished it, the first words out of my mouth were – AWESOME n ULTIMATE. The 490 paged book is not a book, conversely it’s an epic…so it is never too late for you to worship it (so0O start READING IT before you go for shhit next time). While I was reading through it, I could find some resemblance to Boamkesh Bakshi (the famous detective…try to remember the famous T.V. series on DD) and a recent movie…Anil Kapoor starred Chocolate (for so many twists and in-built stories)…this would give an idea to those of you who haven’t read it or for those who even don’t look at novels.
About the review…THE doubt…how can one write review of a history book (!history book as in broad sense!). Though! I have tried my best. The story is about the quest of The Holy Grail (what’s this?…broadly speaking a secret in Christianity…its good-ly mentioned in the book). There are two parties behind it…acche bacche and gande bacche (lets give the team names - Truth Seekers and Evil Forces).
Truth seekers team has Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu in it. Robert Langdon is a genius…he knows history more than those who created it. He has a different perception to everything (like if he is holding a leather cricket ball from seem, first he’ll scan every symbol written on it…try to decipher it in every manner, then he’ll try to read how many stitches there are onto the ball…then crack some code in a nerve-dancing SUPERB climax…then rotate the two halves of the ball oppositely and try to open it to see if there exist more clues or the Grail itself). Even when he is standing, he will be thinking about the historical n symbolic significance of that spot…he is an emblem of HISTORY-MANIAC symbologists. Next team member of Truth Seekers :- Sophie Neveu (a female). They say “girls don’t have brains” and she proved it. All the time in the book she is asking Robert questions; What’s this Grail? What are Sangreal documents? Where are we going? What are we doing? Why are we doing? and many more whats. But she plays an important part in the book…a cryptologist; also a family member of …Who (You will get the answer after full reading of the book…remember full reading).
Evil forces always have the upper hand. The top man in this team is The Teacher (the villain of the book). He is virtually a free-roaming satellite…he can call anybody anywhere anytime…but he can’t be called (Hello! Guys nowdays we have toys like cellphones available everywhere…I guess Dan Brown is good at history but bad at gadgets). So, he also wants the Grail desperately. For this he employs, Bishop Aringarosa…HoD (head) of an organization known as Opus Dei (a parallel society to Church but with different principles). Besides him, The Teacher also employs a sharpshooter cum detective cum a deep follower of Jesus, Silas (Man! He is very ugly very very ugly…even uglier than Ekta Kapoor and her extreme-fake-up- painted female over-actresses).
Besides these we have more characters in the book :-
Capt. Fache – he is a hardhearted cop responsible for finding the murderer of Jacques Sauniere (the creator of secret). He also tries a sting operation on Robert Langdon (yes the book even has a string operation…still thinking you should read?).
Leigh Teabing – Take a morale from him “money is not everything in life”. This man can’t walk, resides in a huge bunglow in Paris, owns hot wheels like Porshe, BMW, Ferrai, etc…etc…yet maniac about the Grail. He is an old historian who has researched his whole life on one word ‘Grail’. He acts as a consultant to the team Truth Seekers.
Others include :- Lieutenant Collet (junior rank to Capt. Fache), Remy (servant of Leigh Teabing), Mr. Vernet (the manager of the Zurich bank).
So0O! Who is ‘The Teacher’ in the book?
Robert (the mystery opener) or Sophie Neveu (the cunning detective) or Bishop Aringarosa (the greedy priest) or Silas (the ugly young man) or Teabing (crippled but crazy about The Grail) or Remy ( hiding from the world and not revealing his true identity by being a servant) or one of the policemen or Vernet….WHO is THE TEACHER!!
Jokes apart, seriously speaking…writing review of a book like DVC is itself writing another DA VINCI CODE. You don’t get many books which give entertainment at their best along with a chance to improve your thinking cum predictability skills. I got an intuition who the real THE TEACHER was around page no. 400!...when Teabing gets kidnapped…and shockingly it proved correct. Throughout the read, such intuitions will emerge in your top floor of your body giving your curiosity level a rollercoaster ride. If history was written like this, I would have studied history all along.
But I won’t give the book 5/5…rather I give the book 4/5. B’coz firstly! You can’t play with religious emotions (even if u and me are atheists)…since I don’t know anything about Christianity, I won’t comment on that. Secondly, sometimes you feel the description of buildings are exaggerated to an out-of-limit extent, thereby making visualizations difficult…BUT still the book has all – mystery, suspense, thrill, great detective shots…. Holy GOD! Dan Brown is a real thief…thief of heartbeats.
Some extracts :-
“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 force”
“In cryptology, that’s called a self-authorizing language! That is, if you’re smart enough to read it, you’re permitted to know what is being said”
“that is the definition of faith – acceptance of that which we imagine to be true, that which we cannot prove”
“be the world of soul, not of the flesh”
My last attempt to the readers to go for this one...see the pic to your above-right and U’ll find a top view of a skull, pair of beast’s jaws, a medal, an armour, couple of swords and above all a Chinese Symbol-type of thing...SO can you decipher the hidden code....
comments and mysteries welcome!!