July Week 1: Angels & Demons

I thought I'd use July's blog challenge as an excuse to start getting through all of the books I've been slowly collecting for the past few months. For the rest of the month I'll be reading and reviewing a book per week, starting with Angels and Demons by Dan Brown.

The novel describes how an ancient, secret society known as the Illuminati threatens to destroy the Vatican City - and the Christian faith by extension - using newly developed antimatter technology. Along with Vittoria Vetra, the technology's co-creator, symbologist and Illuminati specialist Robert Langdon assists in the recovery of the antimatter canister before time runs out.

The thriller takes place over a single day which can lead to some fairly unrealistic time scales (you'd be amazed at how much these characters can achieve in twenty minutes), but I actually thought that the fast pace was suited to the story and only added intensity. It's definitely a page turner!

The book has a lot going for it in the sense that there are a number of different things going on at any one time. Despite having one too many plot twists for my taste, the storyline was interesting, unique and quite thought-provoking. I might leave the series here as I really don't know how you could plausibly throw a Harvard symbologist into a number of other life-or-death situations, but I'd definitely recommend you to give Angels and Demons a read.