[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by BelleZora

It was the excessive hype that sparked all the criticism. I read it hoping simply to be entertained and it definitely met all expectations. Like KentE, I accepted it as fiction and wasn't bothered by any historical inaccuracies. I understand how it upset many religious people and would recommend that people likely to feel offended by negative church portrayals stay away. But for most of the rest of us, it is a fun read.

Not all the criticism was just from the hype, IIRC, nor from the pseudo-religious content. There were and remain some very valid points about the sheer sloppiness of the poor non-historical research done and WTF portrayals thereof*, glaring situational illogic within the storyline, and some very substandard prose quality, which are fairly well represented with examples over at TV Tropes and the Language Log.

I'd be willing to gloss over stuff like that for a subgenre I know and like, at least for the first few chapters, but conspiracy thrillers have never really done it for me, so that probably considerably lowers the likelihood of my personally finding it entertaining, even in a So Bad It's Good way like I do for a lot of Sturgeon's Law-tastic cheesy sci-fi/fantasy.

Originally Posted by KentE

I imagine that it depends on your tolerance for such things-- Once you accept a book as 'fiction', is there really a problem with a possible additional 'fiction' in the plot? I certainly didn't notice any glaring problems of the "that violates the laws of physics" type, and I suppose my knoweldge of the time period isn't complete enough to be offended by the 'notorious innacuracies'.

I'm afraid that for me, there's just this difference between the simple suspension of disbelief, and the hanging of it by the neck until very very dead, and then swatting the remains like a piñata in the hopes that additional dubious goodies will burst forth like candy instead of spilled entrails to try and interpret the significance of, haruspex-style. And everything I've read about TDVC or excerpted from it tends to indicate that it just doesn't hang together well enough internally, even after the initial premise has been accepted.

Anyway, thanks both for your thoughts and recommendation. Certainly a lot of people did enjoy it over the years.

* CRYPTOANALYSIS DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY, as Morbo from Futurama would put it. And neither do ideographic scripted Asian languages, which are not interchangeable, kthnxbye†.

† Both of which happen to be things I apparently know far more than Dan Brown about, despite his having made them fairly significant in his novel and my only having been a vague amateur hobbyist for either subject some years ago. But it seems I still did more reading than he did, even though I have yet to make any money off of it (or just flat out making up untrue stuff about it).