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With that said, one of the first things that surprised me about this book was its length. I listened to the unabridged audio book version and it was a little over 18 hours long. My wife and I listened to the book on our car trip to Arkansas (a 12 hour trip) and we listened both going there and coming back. Obviously we didn’t listen the whole 12 hours there and back because when we got home there was still about 2 hours left in the book. I finished the ending on my own.
On to the review itself. The basic plot is similar to the movie. A scientist at CERN in Switzerland has discovered AntiMatter which is a little free floating speck of light in a tube. There is a polarity in everything. If you have matter you must also have antimatter. If antimatter were to touch matter (anything solid, liquid or gas) a huge explosion would occur. Well it is discovered that the scientist who discovered it is found murdered and the antimatter tube is stolen. The hero of the story, Robert Langdon, is called to CERN because he is a Harvard professor who specializes in a secret, ancient cult called the Illuminati. Apparently the scientist has been branded on his chest with an ambigram (a symbol where the words can be read either right side up or upside down) of the word “Illuminati”. Here is the first time where the book detours from the movie. The movie shows the scientist at CERN murdered and the antimatter stolen and Langdon goes straight to the Vatican. In the book, Langdon goes to Switzerland, examines the scientists body, meets his daughter, is given a tour of the Hadron Collider where the experiments take place, learns the antimatter has been stolen and then he and the daughter, Vittoria, fly to Rome.
Once Langdon and Vittoria are in Vatican City, the real action begins. The pope has died and everybody is gathered at St. Peter’s Basilica to see the new pope become elected. However, four cardinals who are the top contenders for pope have been kidnapped and each one will be murdered and branded with the ambigrams earth, wind, fire, and water an hour apart starting at 8 pm. Langdon must use his Illuminati knowledge to follow the path to the four churches in Rome where the murders are to take place and try to save the cardinals from being murdered.
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