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Hi. Anyone read this (err. dumb question, i guess there's lots of people who have). Well, i'm about half way thru. Its a fantastic book full of interesting things to learn and an exciting story. But, the PoV is all over the place. Did anybody else find that, or is it that im particularly paying attention after reading so much about PoV on this board?
Posts: 329 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
I seem to recall we had a discussion about that a while ago. I'll repeat, more or less, what I said then: POV all over the place, cardboard characters about whom I don't give a damn, boring plot propelled by schoolboy's notion of action. And the author can't be bothered to do his research properly: about 3 minutes on the internet would have taught him where the American Embassy is located in Paris, rather than have him place it where he did (about 1 km off), and also that there is no way you can get a train to Lille from Saint Lazare station (actually, no way you can get any train or any taxi from Saint Lazare at three in the morning). If that's the extent of his research, why should I believe what he's telling me about the Grail and the Last Supper?
[This message has been edited by Silver3 (edited March 31, 2005).]
quote: why should I believe what he's telling me about the Grail and the Last Supper?
You shouldn't, it's fiction not fact. He never makes claim that his theory presented is correct. And, it's not his theory. It's from a book published in the 70's -- the name eludes me, but I think it has "grail" in the title.
Nevertheless, the book has issues. His style of prose is so clipped, so abbreviated, that it makes it nearly impossible to read at times. I got really frustrated.
I'm not going to get into the research aspect. If a story is intriguing enough, I don't care if the Lourve is on the moon. I'm willing to suspend disbelief.
Basically, this story is a take the book semi-mentioned above. It's not well-written, but it's got fascinating ideas. My wife and I both read it, cringed over the prose, but had hours upon hours of conversation regarding the subject matter presented. We didn't care about the characters, either... we just wanted to see how far Dan was willing to take his story...
Which is probably all he intended. His other stories are poorly written, too. A few are worse than The DaVinci Code. Much worse. And this guy teaches at a school that I nearly went to as a kid... then it was fairly presitigious. Now, I wonder about it...
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I found the POV issues to be so bad I nearly chucked the book across the room by Chapter 2. I did end up finishing it, although the POV never did get handled better (There are some real howlers later on!).
Posts: 652 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
I can't remember if the Da Vinci Code is based on Holy Blood, Holy Grail. I know Brown used its theories extensively. Come to think of it, I think one of the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail read a paperback novel while on vacation in France and that sparked his interest into the entire thing.
I read 3/4 of Holy Blood, Holy Grail a few months ago and DVC is pretty much exactly the same, with a plot and characters and the like.
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