ClumsyMonkey.net

Axtech wrote:Here's Aerin's very recent review from her LJ (since it's not a friends only journal, I think it's safe to post it. hope you don't mind, Aerin! )

So I finished The Da Vinci Code, which, all in all, was a good read, although certainly not everything it's cracked up to be.

The premise of the novel is an interesting idea, but not one that I'd place any stock in -- after all, this is fiction. What I find really amusing, then, is the Christian response to the book. There are at least four books that scramble to refute Brown's claims from a Christian perspective - Cracking Da Vinci's Code, Breaking the Da Vinci Code, The Truth Behind the Da Vinci Code, and Fact and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code. Interesting. Because, last I checked, Dan Brown wasn't claiming to be revealing the absolute truth about Christian history, he was writing a novel. You know, novel? Those things that people make up?

I find it especially ridiculous how at least one of these response books (Cracking Da Vinci's Code) tries to spin it like Dan Brown has an "agenda". Now, I don't know Mr. Brown, but I'm fairly sure his "agenda" is, at least in part, to make a lot of money, and he's been extremely successful in doing so. But this author would have us believe that Mr. Brown is an agent of the devil or some dastardly fringe group, trying to lure Christians away from the faith. Well, if there are indeed people out there who don't understand the difference between fiction and non-fiction, and are going to abandon their lifelong faith because a poorly-written best-selling novel said that maybe Jesus was married, well... if I were Christian, I'd say "good riddance, dumbass." But that's just me.

But if you're in the market for fiction that makes perfect sense, and could be true, and would be really neat if it was true, check out Orson Scott Card's Atlantis. Sometimes it really does suck that fiction is, in fact, just fiction.