Reviews - Illuminati | The StoryGraph

5.17k reviews for:

Illuminati

Dan Brown

3.75 AVERAGE

abbysonofrobert's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous challenging dark tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

dorothy_dickerson's review against another edition

4.5

adventurous mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

Science vs religion gets bloody. Nothing new there. But when a physicist is murdered over a new discovery, things really amp up. Ignoring the weird Italian and fake science (eh, it's fiction, I can let it pass), the story is really compelling. A physicist murdered at the hands of what seems to be famed Illuminati, missing then murdered Cardinals, branded flesh, religious fervor turned mania... I couldn't put it down! I found Carlo Ventresca to be very tragic. Yeah he did a lot of bad things, but at the same time, I can't hate him. When you've been told since you were a child that God has plans for you, yeah, I think in time you are going to develop mania and then madness when your beliefs come crashing down.
The only things I didn't really care about was that the murderer was Middle Eastern. I'm not sure if this was just because of the already existing tensions between the US and Al-Qaeda that only got worse after 9/11, and making him a womanizing sadist. I'm glad they changed that in the movie. I wish the story had at least a paragraph on how Carlo even found him and orchestrated the whole thing. Also didn't really care for the contrived relationship between Langdon and Vittoria. I know there's trauma bonding, but it didn't feel like that at all. They barely interacted. Also glad they kept that out of the movie.