Grant Newman- Angels & Demons

Grant Newman
Angels & Demons
Dan Brown
Realistic Fiction
Just Right
p. 102

1. Right now, the main characters, Robert Langdon, a symbology professor at Harvard University, and Vittoria Vetra, a physicist at CERN, are in an underground lab at CERN, which is a scientific research center in Geneva, Switzerland. Vittoria, coming back from studying something else, has found her father dead in his apartment, branded with a symbol of an anti-catholocism group that hasn't been heard of for hundreds of years, and one of his eyeballs out. She shows Langdon the particle accelerator in CERN, and shows how the Big Bang Theory can be proved, and that there are two kinds of matter- anti-matter and matter. She has kept anti-matter and thinks that it could be the next fuel source, but the problem is it's incredibly explosive, because it explodes when it touches matter. She goes to find a larger supply in a further underground lab, and finds it has been stolen. The battery that protects the specimen from detonation has 24 hours left on it, and they now have to get it back, or it could explode everything within a five-mile radius of itself.

2. I like it a lot so far, I read this book once last year, but I don't remember everything about it, so it's a semi-new experience. The beginning is a little bit slow, but it's really interesting too. They use a lot of high-level science vocabulary, so some of it is a little hard to understand, and they talk about physics most of the time they're at CERN. Dan Brown does a good job with providing a lot of detail, but not an overwhelming amount. He describes all the characters very well, I think, and lets you picture them in your head easily. There's a lot of religion in the book so far and how religion and science interact with each other, so it's a little strange. I like it a lot so far, and I think it'll get faster and even better than it already is. I can tell that it will be suspenseful already. Some of the brands they use in the book are ambigrams, meaning they read the same upside-down as right-side up, and they actually work that way, so you can flip the book over and it looks the same. I like that aspect a lot. I'm very impressed with his writing and the subject matter, so, I like the book a lot right now.

3. A large theme I've noticed so far is how religion and science have been accepted to be very different and dislike each other, but the possibility that they can coexist and that they explain each other. I think it's interesting, and some of the science aspect of it we have been learning a little about in Science this year, so it's neat. They've given a background about what each of the sides thinks about how the world was created, and they both make sense, according to the research Vittoria and her father have done. Her father was a Catholic priest as well as a particle physicist, and the way he talked about things, as she reminisces, is very interesting. It's a curious subject, but they do go in depth somewhat in the book, but it doesn't completely overwhelm the underlying plot.

4. My favorite character is Robert Langdon. He's very intelligent, and how he thinks (it shows in the book) is also interesting. Each of the characters brings a large amount of knowlege together, and I think Robert's will end up helping their cause the most. He seems to be a normal person, but also smart; he was flown from Boston to Switzerland in an hour, and he was perplexed. I don't know who wouldn't be, but the way he thinks, Brown writes about him like he's both average and very special at the same time. I think it's really hard to write that way, but he accomplishes it well. He's my favorite character also because his personality is welcoming, and they mention that in the book. He's somewhat social, which you might not expect from a Harvard professor, but he is. I like this character a lot and I hope to see it develop more.

5. My least favorite character is Maximillian Kohler, the director of CERN. I don't like him because he really isn't very friendly, and doesn't take the other characters thoughts, feelings, emotions, etc. into account. They describe him being cold, and that employees don't like him at all, and that he's a hard man to please. He's not welcoming at all, and I really don't like that. He's very intelligent in his field, but he's pretty one-dimensional that way. He seems to want everything for himself, and he seems to neglect others when he tries to think, so it's very weird. I don't like his personality and the way he holds himself is very demanding which I don't like either.

6. A prediction I have for the book is that the anti-Catholocism cult is the one behind the stealing, because they were the ones that branded Vittoria's father, and that they will put the anti-matter in the Vatican, because that's where the head of Catholocism is, so they would want to blow up the Vatican, and all the history and documents that go along with it.