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My apologies to those of you utterly uninterested in my on-going issues with Angels & Demons. I promise this will be the last post on the matter, but as I’ve just finished it, I thought I’d let you know the final verdict. I’ll keep it short:

1. Alright, so clearly Mr. Brown owns dictionaries and other word-tools. After all, he uses big words like “cognition” and “sepulchral” accurately and in context (although I’d have much preferred e.g., “looked around the room” to “surveyed the circumference of the room”). This is why I don’t understand why none of the characters “run”, “hurry”, “fly”, “hasten” or “sprint” – they only “dash”. Which is a fine word, but when a large portion of the last several hours of the book have people racing around the Vatican, could you maybe mix it up a little?
2. I wonder whether it’s possible to plagiarize yourself?
3. When Kohler – the older director of CERN, who has been unable to walk since childhood – arrives at the Vatican and sees himself in a mirror, “the sight of his own twisted form repulsed him”. Because of his disability he “ has never known the touch of a woman”. The Swiss Guard doesn’t search him well because they “are ashamed” by the disability. I’m not going to hold forth about my reaction to those bits of supposed insight into the lives of people with disabilities and the reactions of those around us. I’m sure you have an idea.

I’m going to do something serene now. Maybe I’ll stop sputtering in a couple of days.