Angels & Demons by Dan Brown.

4/5 rating. 569 pages.

Book #70 of 2020. Read October 7, 2020.

This is the prequel to The Da Vinci Code and is Robert Langdon’s first wild adventure.

This book is set mostly in Rome (and the Vatican) as a murdered and branded scientist found at CERN leads to a plot by the Illuminati to blow up Vatican City with antimatter. As Robert learns more, he realizes that the 4 Preferiti – the bishops most likely to become the next Pope – have been kidnapped and he is the only one who knows enough to stop it!

This is a fun book where you are not sure what mystery, clue, or twist will come next. Dan has an incredible way of writing that draws you in and makes it almost impossible to not keep reading just a little more…

Quotes:

“As a scientist I have come to learn that information is only as valuable as its source.”

“‘Physics?’ Vittoria cried. ‘I thought you loved God!’

‘I do, very much. Which is why I want to study his divine rules. The laws of physics are the canvas God laid down on which to paint his masterpiece.’”

“Fear cripples faster than any implement of war.”

“‘Progress’ was Mother Earth’s ultimate malignancy.”

“Faith is universal. Our specific methods for understanding it are arbitrary. Some of us pray to Jesus, some of us go to Mecca, some of us study subatomic particles. In the end we are all just searching for truth, that which is greater than ourselves.”

“You and I serve God in different capacities, but service always brings honor.”

“His Holiness once told me that a Pope is a man torn between two worlds…the real world and the divine. He warned that any church that ignored reality would not survive to enjoy the divine.”

“Viewers didn’t want truth anymore; they wanted entertainment.”

IG Link.