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Tracey (USA: CT) (2009/03/30):
What a load of codswallop this book is. I read this to oblige someone else (a boss; no one else would have gotten me to finish it), and was floored by all the pseudo-learned nonsense Dan Brown throws at his poor benighted reader. I'm no expert - but I'm also not an idiot, and I did have a very good art history teacher when I went to art school. It didn't take me long to spot an ever-growing list of factual errors in the "proofs". I posted a webpage outlining what I found for the benefit of the person who made me read this piece of ... fiction; I wish in a way I still had it, but it never seemed worth wasting the webspace on for more than the time I needed it. One review said "Though some will quibble with the veracity of Brown's conjectures, therein lies the fun." It isn't exactly "quibbling" when there's solid proof showing he was blowing smoke up our ... eyeglasses, but let that pass. The conjectures themselves were amusing enough, but I've seen them posited in far more convincing and intelligent formats. It still makes me sad that the Vatican chose to distinguish such pure boneheadedness by paying it any attention at all; it so richly deserved to sink into utter oblivion, and so very much the exact opposite happened. "Fun"? Perhaps - if the book had been remotely well-written. I found it absolutely painful. The only positive thing I can find to say about the book is that it made people look at Da Vinci and his work who might not have ever done so otherwise. Perhaps more of the semi-literate now know who Da Vinci is than previously. So - yay. But having art education expanded microscopically at the cost of having this great steaming pile of inanity inflicted on a willing public... God help us all.
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