The Da Vinci Code (Indonesian Translation)

That's the real flaw in the book both as a story and as an exploration of ideas: it has a strong feeling of shallowness about it. You sort of get to know the characters, but they seem like rather shallow people. One of the heroes is motivated largely by such a ridiculous overreaction to an incident in her past that it strains credibility to the breaking point and rather than invoking sympathy, mostly just makes you want to shake her. The ideas presented are interesting, but one gets the feeling there are all sorts of other sides to the story that are just being ignored in order to increase the plausibility of the favored theory.
The narration continues to be annoying throughout the book, and the ending is strained at best (another review describes it as frantic backpeddling).

It's a good book for puzzle lovers and those who find historical trivia fascinating. I enjoyed it. But it's not a great book, nor is it particularly well-written. And if you're really interested in the theories about Mary Magdalene, I recommend the PBS special.

It's become obvious since I originally read this book that both the theories about Mary Magdalene and, unfortunately, the bits about Da Vinci that I found very interesting are not only controversial but complete bunk. Much of it appears to be based on forged documents, invented theories that have already been refuted, and events with more credible alternate explanations. This makes the book even more pure fluff than it felt like at the time. Download the book here.