Avernus

The backstory: I felt that I really ought to try reading The Da Vinci Code. I've heard enough people talking about it in a way that put my hackles up, I felt that I ought to read it just so I can pour scorn on it from a position of knowledge rather than ignorance. So, finding I had finished my second essay before the start of term with some time to spare, I decided that I could probably get away with starting it.

The review: Ow. Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow.

I was expecting it to be bad. I just wasn't expecting it to be quite *that* bad.

The first shock was that it had somehow fallen beneath my radar that it couched itself in terms of work of 'true fiction'. Rather like that excrutiating bit at the beginning of the first X-Files episode about 'the events in this program are based on real government files', the book opens with a selection of 'facts' which the author claims to be 'true' in the novel, suggesting that, in fact, what you *think* is a clever and break-neck thriller is actually an expose of THE TRUTH BEHIND THE CHURCH!!!11!!!!

The clear advantage for the author in couching it in such 'true fiction' terms is that he can spout all sorts of crap about all sorts of things without ever, say, quoting his 'sources'. Or being sued for libel. Because, y'know, fiction doesn't need *scholarship*.

I'm currently up to page 61, and debating whether I can bear to read any further. I can't remember the last time I actually consciously gave up on a book. I will read a *lot* of things that I'm not really enjoying, either because I feel it's improving or educational, or just out of a misplaced sense of stubbornness. And I'd be the first to admit that I have a fairly low enjoyment threshold - I can enjoy a *lot* of random crap, as anyone who's privvy to my random sci-fi enjoyment will know. But this book...

As I said, I wasn't quite expecting it to be set up as a work of fiction. And I certainly wasn't expecting it to be quite such a *bad* work of fiction. I mean really, truly *bad*. There are too many people who like this book, and I can't understand how. Because just as a book, ignoring the cod-scholarship and conspiracy theories, it's plain *bad*. The main character is the most *awful* Marty-Steve. He has characteristics rather than a character. He gets embarrassed in the introduction to a lecture he's meant to be giving because the woman introducing him reads out sections from a Boston magazine which has voted him one of the city's 'top ten most intriguing people'. The article describes his 'bookish charm' and his voice as 'like melted chocolate'. The protagonist, naturally, blushes and squirms down in his seat, because look! He's good looking and universally loved but he's still *modest* with it! He's even got *claustrophobia* through being *trapped down an abandoned mineshaft as a child*. 'What's that you say Lassie? Timmy's trapped down the UNCONVINCING PLOT DEVICE TO ELICIT SYMPATHY?'

He's sweet! He's smart! He used to be a confirmed batchelor until an exciting Italian woman loved him and left him, and now he just feels so empty inside...

*retch*

I'd be ashamed to write fanfic that has this much hero worship. I'm really not looking forward to the arrival of 'Sophie Neveu, a gifted French crytologist.' I may actually have to kill myself.

Now, moving on from the dreadful caracaturisation (did I mention the bad-tempered, straight-talking, heavily built French detective, nicknamed 'le taureau'? Did I mention him? Or the albino ex-criminal religious fanatic who gets off on his self-inflicted penance?). The movement of the narrative is really, really cheap. Much of the early section is set in the Louvre. So the author *naturally* has to do the *most goddawful info dump* just to show that 'look! look, I've been to the Louvre at night when there aren't any people there because I'm a *good* author and I do *research*. Just look at that research. look at the precision of the description. You almost feel you're there, don't you? Just like I was actually there, because I *researched* it.' *proud*.

The author has evidently not come across the concept of 'less is more'. I like worlds where the author evidently knows every detail but doesn't feel the need to tell us unless it's damn well *relevant*. But apparently this is an old fashioned attitude.

And the settings aren't the worst of it. Let's not forget the author's *awful* tendency towards cheap cliff-hanger chapter endings. Having established that something has been writen with ultra-violet marker around the body of the museum curator, the lights are turned off, the ultra-violet light switched on, the protagonist jumps in shock, cries 'What the hell does this mean?!'...

...and we cut away to a chapter about something completely different. 'Ah ha!' says the author, smugly inserting a three-page chapter of no relevance to the current movement of the story. 'For lo, they shall sit there for three pages in a state of suspense, for I am an *author* and I hold their emotions in thrall!!!!11!!'

And quite apart from the awful, awful nature of the thing just as a book, the scholarship is dreadful too. I was willing to turn a slightly indulgent blind eye to the guff about the 'female principle' and the balance of male and female in primitive religion - 'a little outdated,' I thought, 'a little Golden Bough, but as a plot device it works in Utena, so I guess I shouldn't be too judgemental.' It grated a little after the third page of exposition from the Hero to the Police Detective (what detective would actually have that conversation over the body of the victim? Even in France!), but I could put up with it if treated with the right degree of humour. Then, of course, I struck page 61, the point at which my will to live faded. I could just about accept the author claiming the pentagram as a symbol of Venus, though I've never actually seen it in any Venus iconography I remember. It was the section about it being the symbol of Venus because the planet Venus 'was the same as the goddess' and the planet's course forming a perfect pentagram in the sky every eight years. The 'ancients' knew this, and hence venerated the pentagram as symbol of Venus. They therefore used the eight years cycle as the basis for the Olympic games, which were to be held twice every cycle.

.....

And which sources were you using here, Mr Brown? When exactly did Venus become the embodiment of 'the feminine'? True, she was goddess of love and sex. While Gaia/Rhea was the earth mother, and Hera was the goddess of marriage, women and childbirth, and Demeter was the embodiment of fertility, as was even *Artemis* in some places. But overlooking that and accepting Venus as just a shorthand for 'whichever unfortunate goddess I feel like pinning my theories on this week' - which 'ancients' exactly identified Venus with the Evening Star? Because I can't recall that clear identification in Greek mythology, certainly. The Evening Star was as frequently Hespera or Lucifer as it was Venus. And while I'm admittedly a little shaky on many other mythologies, I don't think there's a lot of evidence of the Egyptians associating, say, Hathor with the evening star.

Then - which Venus-worshipping 'ancients' exactly were so well versed in astrology that they could pinpoint Venus' position so accurately for that period of time - and more to the point, record it? But even allowing them that degree of astronomical knowledge - I'll concede, the Greeks studied it quite a bit, as did the Egyptians, and the Messopotamians were quite hot on the subject - why in *God's* name should that have anything to do with the Olympic Games?

'Umm...well...the pentagrams happen every eight years, and the Olympic Games every four years...so they must be related!'

...whatever you say, Mr Brown. Of course, the fact that the Olympic Games were sacred to Zeus and had nothing to do with Venus is quite irrelevant. As is the fact that I don't believe any classical source anywhere would associate the games with Venus. As is the fact that the Games were founded in sufficiently historical times (776 traditionally, probably rather later) that such worship of the 'feminine principle' as you postulate had *certainly* been wiped out in such municipal events by the advent of the delightfully chauvenistic Dorians.

I don't know if I can go on reading this book. If I treat it as a work of comedy I can just about bear it. But if the Christian references are as poorly researched and implausible as the Classical ones (as I rather suspect they will be), then on behalf of a religion I don't share but at least respect and try to understand, I think I'll have to go on reading just so I can rant from a position of knowledge.

After all, 'know thy enemy' was rather the plan when I started out on this goddawful thing.