Angels and Demons, by Dan Brown

Okay, this is the first time in a while that I actually post a review of a book I actually finished reading today! A great improvement, as of late. ^,~

Angels and Demons was an awesome, totally breath-taking read for me! (btw, this isn't the exact cover of the copy was reading, but it looked really cool to me. Fascinating anyway, isn't it? If you tilt your head to read it upside down, the title will look exactly the same way it does right-side up! This kind of trick, known as an "ambigram," actually features a lot in the actual story. I'd never heard of ambigrams before now, so I thought this was really cool!)

This book was written by Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, which I remembered reading and enjoying very much 1 or 2 years ago. (The book is a ton better than seeing the movie, I promise!) Dan actually published this book and meant for the story's events to come before The Da Vinci Code, so I thought it was a little strange that there's a movie of Angels and Demons now instead of earlier. Oh well, I guess Da Vinci Code seemed the better story, and maybe was a bit more controversial.

Okay, so back to this book: I'll admit that the beginning was a tad slow and needed some momentum to get the ball rolling, but besides that, the entire book was honestly a wild rollercoaster ride of mind-boggling mysteries, adrenaline-pumping action, heart-stopping suspense, cliff-hangers you can't resist at the end of every chapter, and characters that keep you guessing their true intentions right to the finish!!!

Even though this was published almost a decade ago, I feel some hesitation in revealing the story, in case there are some people who haven't read the book yet (it's meant for adult readers, after all). But basically the conflict is between religion and science. There's this whole dirty plot where there's an antimatter time-bomb set to blow up the Vatican City (in Rome) in just hours, so it's amazing that the entire huge book takes place in just one night. Meanwhile 4 cardinals are going to get murdered by an old brotherhood called the Illuminati, and about the only person who can save them is a symbologist professor from Harvard named Robert Langdon, who has to interpret the clues and signs so he can find out where they're hidden. Of course, there are people who help him, but it's hard to tell who is on the side of good or bad.

Just trust me, it's a very riveting read. Only I wouldn't advise seeing the movie first. Not that I have, but I've read the description of the plot on Wikipedia, and it seems too different. They even got most of the names all wrong! I might still watch it, but I don't think I'll like it. But in my opinion, the book is the best!

Link to the trailer.