This is the first book from the controversial, yet brilliant author Dan Brown, published in 2000. Brown has written four books so far, but only Angels and Demons, and his second book, The Da Vinci Code follow on in a series.

Angels and Demons starts with Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor of Religious Symbology and the main protagonist in this book, receiving a fax from a man called Maximilian Kohler, asking him to investigate the murder of a fellow scientist called Leonardo Vetra. Langdon was called due to a brand on Vetra’s chest reading ‘Illuminati’: an ancient secret society, consisting of scientists and educated people such as Leonardo Da Vinci, with a sole target of inflicting vengeance and terror on the Catholic Church. The Illuminati is an area in which Langdon has a lot of expertise, enough to write several in depth books detailing the Illuminati’s birth and life.

Leonardo Vetra, and his daughter Viitoria were working on something called antimatter, and managed to do what no-one had ever done and capture some. Unfortunately, antimatter is very unstable and when it touches anything it reacts with the force of a small bomb… which is why Robert Langdon and Viitoria Vetra have to find it when it is stolen and placed in a secret location in the Vatican City. Where a new pope is being chosen. On top of this, four of the top cardinals have been kidnapped by the Illuminati and will be killed at certain places around Rome. Langdon and Vetra are then thrust into a desperate race against time to save the four cardinals and stop the antimatter bomb, all in 24 hours. The storyline continues, but if I went any further I would ruin the fantastic ending.

All in all, the book is simply brilliant. The storyline is fast paced (as the whole book takes place in just over a day) and yet it never loses the plot, so to speak, it always stays very exciting and it will draw you in with no trouble at all. On top of this, the story line is fairly easy to follow, with a very clever plot twist at the end. There are several scenes that are quite violent and may not be suitable for a younger reader.

Another thing that Dan Brown does so well is keep the book accurate and up to date. The Illuminati are (or were) a real organisation and all the facts listed in the book about their symbology and them spreading globally are factually correct. The first chapters of the book are set in a place called CERN, which no doubt you’ve heard of fairly recently due to their breakthrough Large Hadron Collider. All the places in Rome, as well as the statues and documents mentioned in the book are also real. To me, this shows that Dan Brown has planned from the very beginning to make this book a fast-paced, clever book, without going overboard on the out-of-this-world science fiction.

I would recommend this book to anyone.

Andrew Bennie