HP6 came under the best premises. I pre-ordered it on Amazon saving 30%, then, after delivery I got another $ back from Amazon because they find a better agreement allowing them to make a better price, and last I received it the day before leaving for holidays. Everything went fine and smooth, so I was positively biased.
I found this book to be really good, with less mysteries to solve and more depth, overall a more enjoyable reading like if turning a bit down the pace the effort went in quality.
In this book more and more I felt drawn into the HP’s world. Also the story diverged from the standard template the other books accustomed us. It still tells about a school year, but the ending is more open, this book sets the stage for a follow up radically different.
I think everyone knows by now that Dumbledore is going to die, and this is a really touching point in the story, I was left with a sense of sadness and lost for a couple of day in the real life.
Characters are growing up, and the story becomes more mature as well. As already laid out in the previous episodes, the boundaries between good and evil become more fuzzy, people deeply convinced of acting for good sake will end in doing wrong. I would have expected HP to be tempted of joining Voldemort side to add some more tension to the character, but this wasn’t the case. Voldemort is actively trying to destroy everything is important to Harry leaving him no other way that Good.
Tensions in Harry are whether or not to declare himself to Jinny, how to let Ron and Hermione to reconcile, why no one believes him when he says that Draco is a Death Eater… well nothing particularly new.
I think that the magic of the book is in how it is written in the world described and how they are described, in the ingenuity involved.
I have a hope, I strongly hope that one day, maybe not the next book, nor the one after, but eventually this masterpiece will come to an end. Stories must end. The end alone is half of the story, while I fear, being HP a goldmine, that this would turn in an endless soap-opera with HP turned in some rogue hero fighting against an endlessly re-spawning enemy.
What if red hood fable instead of ending with the death of the wolf, would have ended with the wolf escaping and RedHood and her granny starting an EvilWolf Private Eye investigation company?

Writing a bad review of Angels and Daemons is like shooting at the ambulance, really too easy.The basis on which the entire novel holds are weak (problem: how would you find an object framed by a wireless cam? Just search the radio transmitter). CERN has an entire web section dedicated to the novel and to the antimatter stuff explaining why what described by Dan Brown can’t physically happen. Moreover anyone that ever used a battery powered device knows that batteries are far to have a second perfect discharge time. As it is quite … ehm… unlikely? that falling thousands meters from the sky you can really slow your vertical speed with a sheet of cover and even more … unlikely you can maneuver it to adjust your fall onto a precise objective.
If the main character is somewhat more defined and refined of the protagonist of the previous novel, the other characters are quite dull and not developed.
The final revelation comes all but unexpected and lets you wonder how that extent of madness could go unnoticed by everyone close to the Camerlengo.
The narrative pace has also an hard time to reach the right beat, with a quite slow part before the hunt for the killer begins.
Well, once all this has been told, is Angels and Daemons a bad book? I can’t say so. After all the writing technique of Dan Brown and his deep knowledge of the reader psychology makes it really hard for you to drop the book before you read the word “end”.
Also the matter narrated is very intriguing by itself – secret society, obscure plots, the pope election rituals, the Vatican secret library, the Swiss Guard and so on.
When I read the “Da Vinci Code” I thought it was a sort of manifest per advertising some ideas (about the origin of the Christian religion, about the Sion’s priorate). Since a great effort went in the description and motivation of this stuff and so little in the developing a character believability.
After reading Angels and Daemons I reckon this is just the author style, excellent in creating addiction, very good at presenting secret society and little known facts of our past, but rather weak on characters and rough about plot.