Well, Angels and Demons has been exciting, there are a lot of major unforgiveable mistakes and sleight of hands Mr. Dan Brown tries to get away with. If they were insignificant details it would be easier to get in to the book, as the story is quite "thrilling". His use of cheap techniques to blurt out random facts makes me cringe, especially when they aren't all that accurate.

He's a good idea man, and once the story is moving it's quite entertaining, but there are moments when I want to throw something at him for either being too condescending to the readers or trying to sound too educated through his characters.

On the other hand, I also just read the Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum, and once again, he rocks. His writing is probably the most enjoyable stuff I've ever read.

I've found that the story and the writing are two completely different equations. Rarely do authors combine excellence in both. I had the chance to experience this in a very magnified situation by reading two Robert Ludlum books at once. However, one was not written by Robert Ludlum. Since he died in 2001, all the new books of his are compiled from his notes by a "carefully selected author". The difference was incredible. The story was there, and was interesting, but the writing was so tediuous and almost painful. The tone was basically everything I've disliked about Dan Brown but magnified about seven times. Robert Ludlum tends to include a lot of foreign dialog as his books are usually about spies moving all over the world, so this nameless ghost author tried to do the same. After repeating the world Schloss about 6 times in 2 pages, it made me think of some little kid trying to be like his mentor but failing entirely. And usually it will be something like this.

"Halto," the man yelled to the taxi driver. "Stop!".
"Si senor," replied the cab driver. "Yes sir".

If you are going to use some fancy foreign phrases to spice up your crappy writing, don't waste time by choosing unfancy terms and then explaining them. Don't waste my time by writing to me like I'm in middle school trying to take an introduction to foreign language class with Frau Large. Just don't even bother.

As for Dan Brown, he's guilty of using his characters in unrealistic ways to make points. Atleast he should maybe try to make only about half of his characters sound like pretentious dumbasses. My favorite technique is as follows:

Character A: Well isn't (insert random well know misconception)?
Smartass character B: Actually, that is a common misconception. In reality, (insert another misconception that Dan Brown didn't study enough to actually verify).

That bores me entirely. It's a cheap way of saying look how smart I am, I researched all these facts so that I could attempt to make my readers go "gosh, I didn't know that, this guy must be smart!"

Oh, actually I might be entirely wrong about Dan Brown. I forgot that the main character is a professor, and that is what professors are pretty much always like: assuming the stupidity of their crowd, anxiously awaiting the chance to correct some meaningless tidbit with some other meaningless tidbit. Manipulating conversations to get to the point where they can say, "Actually, that is a common misconception." "Oh, you didn't know that (insert some random esoteric fact releated to the special area of that professor's vastly important expertise that has no real effect on the rest of the world, especially those that produce things)? I guess I forget we're not all ____ologists." Screw you stuck up professors. No one cares. Any of us could have just stayed in school writing papers about unimportant crap until the day we die, but some of us (luckily not me just yet...) have to work in a real job. Actually pretty much all of my professors were good people, and I never had much experience with any pretentious ones except in classes relating to English or arts and what not. The college of engineering doesn't really put up with bs as much I guess.

I gotta get tickets for tool tomorrow. Wish me luck, cause about half the people reading this are going to be sitting in the seats I manage to find.