Rating: 
Summary: Inaccurate, predictable, cliched...(0 Stars)
Review: Unfortunately, Amazon does not let you give a 0 star rating...
I agree with most of the other reviewers who gave this book a low star rating. I have read his other books and really liked them all. This book is the worst of his writing and seems to have been released without verifying many of facts on computer security issues that are well-known to an average software engineer. This book seems to have been used as an opportunity to cash in on Dan Brown's successes with his other novels DVC and A&D, both of which are a good read. This book is really an insult to an average software engineer's intelligence. Perhaps the author's assumption is that the readers are less intelligent as the characters in the novel. Full of predictable scenarios and plots, boring and thin dialogues, clumsy plot, characters without any dimensions or intelligence, incredibly vague and inaccurate. If you want waste your time (like me :-( ...regretful now) by reading this, go ahead. I will be careful in buying future works of this author though.
Rating: 
Summary: Confused in Time
Review: This book is about the life of a certain agent that cracks numerous codes for the United States of America. It is also about a association called the NSA and it has a invincible code breaking machine that can break any code it is givin but it had encountered one such code it is unable to crack. When this had occured the agency had called in their top cryptographer, Susan Fletcher, she is also an beautiful and smart mathematician. She had uncovered such a secret that the NSA is being held hostage by not guns or terrorists, but a CODE. It was unable to break and it held the intelligence of the U.S. hostage. She also has a lover and in the end she fought for not her country, but the lives of her loved ones and in the end. Well to find that out you should read this book. Its not that i liked or disliked this book, its that i was well pleased but in times dissapointed with the scenes. I was confused in certain times because Dan Brown had changed the scene without me even knowing. I had learned many things from this book and it also showed me a new code that had brought glamorous news to my life. I had confused many people and brought them to understand many new things. This bok also got me thinking if their is any secret organizations that is keeping this world in peace and not caos. This book compared to others had taught me more things in life than any before were able to. It taught me self confidence and how to think for myself and not ask others for help.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, but not a favorite
Review: This story is interesting and fun to read, especially to figure out the puzzle at the end, it just isn't Dan Brown at his best. Don't judge nor end enjoying this authors work with this book. Do read his other works, especially Angels and Demons and DaVinci Code. They are 5 star pieces of work.
Rating: 
Summary: Better than Da Vinci Code
Review: I don't understand why people are panning this book. I thought it was great. Far better than Deception Point and I actually enjoyed it more than Da Vinci Code. I'm not a computer tech person so maybe I missed some of the incorrect parts of the story. However the book was incredibly fast paced and extremely difficult to put down. Highly enjoyable.
Rating:
Summary: Exhilarating thriller
Review: The more Dan Brown I read, the more I enjoy Dan Brown. The man is a master of the fast paced thriller and it is fun to watch his growth from one book to another even if I did begin my acquaintanceship with his blockbuster "The DaVinci Code." Brown's books always start fast and "Digital Fortress" is no exception. Ensei Tankado dies in a Seville plaza. He raises his hand, fingers outstretched . . . and dies. Susan Fletcher, a National Security Agency cryptographer is roused from her dreams first by a call from David Becker, her university professor boyfriend who tells her he has to postpone their planned weekend romantic retreat in order to fly off to an unknown destination. Seething and disappointed, her anger if interupted by a call from Commander Strathmore, her NSA boss asking - commanding - that she come in on this Saturday to help on an emergency project. It seems Tankado has launched an attack on NSA's most secret computers. From that point on, Brown takes you on a non-stop adventure - and it's fun. Brown's characters are well rounded and don't engage in super-heroics, though they do seem to catch more than their share of lucky breaks. But Brown's plotting carries you over those points so fast that you fail or simply don't want to notice them. For the thriller fan, "Digital Fortress" is an exhilarating read. Jerry
Rating: 
Summary: One of the best
Review: DIGITAL FORTRESS is by far one of the three best books I've come across in months. If you read anything, you have to read these: THE RULE OF FOUR by Caldwell and Thomason, THE BARK OF THE DOGWOOD by J.McCrae, and DIGITAL FORTRESS. These books MOVE and these authors know how to tell a story. Of course, I'm a Brown fan from way back, having delved into all of his books, sometimes reading them twice! But there are other great reads out there too. Whatever you do, by all means read DIGITAL FORTRESS first, even before some of Brown's better sellers. You can't go wrong with this book--it's a great beach read!!!
Rating:
Summary: DF fails the suspension of disbelief test . . .
Review: This book is readable, but just barely, because it is fast paced and action packed. To me, it couldn't hold a candle to DVC - but perhaps that is because, even as an amateur, I know more about cryptography then I do about religion. Good fiction must be filled with details that are plausible even if they are fabricated, else readers can't suspend disbelief. DF fails that test. Other reviewers here have noted repeatedly the lack of research or depth of understanding about cryptography or computers apparent, but I would like to mention several concrete examples, of varying importance: 1. David Becker, the brilliant professor at Georgetown University in the nation's capital, has never heard of the National Security Agency, which was subject of the bestseller, "The Puzzle Palace", and is frequently mentioned in the Washington Post. How smart could he be to miss a low value Jeopardy question? 2. The U.S. government keeps all its critical sensitive computer files in one central system without a backup, and it takes at least 45 minutes to pull the plug. This isn't how it's done, and it makes no sense that anyone would do it that way. Talk about a disaster waiting to happen! 3. The Digital Fortress computer file is allegedly encrypted with itself - but apart from the assertions of its author, there is no reason to believe that to be the case. Apparently the top crypto guy at NSA believes it, as do savvy high-tech CEOs in Japan. The inability to "crack the code" with TRANSLTR, when TRANSLTR fails to find any clear text, is equally consistent with there having been no clear text in the first place. 4. My favorite: The NSA's big iron, TRANSLTR, solves any encrypted file through brute force, that is, systematically trying all possible keys until it hits the right one. Brute force works in theory but can't possibly be implemented to achieve this level of universal success in practice. The book claims that TRANSLATR can solve almost any code in 10 minutes because of its massive parallel processing capacity. But that means that if the key is extended by one binary bit - a one or a zero - there are now twice as many possible keys, and a code that could cracked this way in 10 minutes would now take 20 minutes. Adding 5 digits would require 320 minutes (over 5 hours). Adding 10 digits would require over 10,000 minutes (over 170 hours). You get the idea - it's the story of the King, the Pauper, the Chess Board, and the Grains of Rice that the King must double each day on each successive square (see, for example, http://www.phy.uct.ac.za/courses/dga/exponent/doubling.htm ). I absolutely couldn't get my mind around this fantasy. I'm sure the NSA uses supercomputers (but less sure they are massively parallel) - but if it "reads" PGP encryptions, it is because it knows how to find the prime factors of numbers that are the product of two very, very large primes - and not through brute force. 5. The book claims the Nagasaki bomb wasn't based on plutonium 239, yet numerous authoritative sources on the web indicate it was. I don't know who is right, but I do know you can't make a bomb out of U238, which is plain old non-fissile uranium.
Rating:
Summary: Worst I've Read in a Long Time
Review: This is only my opinion, but I have trouble calling this a thriller. It certainly is no longer cutting edge (published in 1998), but that's not the author's fault. The rest of it is. For the first 200 pages, the action moves forward with all the speed of a dead horse. You aren't sure what the point is, and you don't care. What the action lacks in thrills, it makes up for in melodrama. There was one endless scene where the pretty heroine-crytographer is pulled back and forth between two men that is reminiscent of that old silent serial (Perils of Pauline? for you movie history buffs). The dialogue is ghastly and the description is nonsensical. His jet black eyes were like coal? She was conservatively dressed in plaid pants? What was the author thinking? There is a whole lot of disgusting stuff we don't need to know, like a detailed description of the hero's several visits to a filthy public restroom. Finally, if a character is speaking a language other than English, the author should be sure to get it right. I can't tell you about the Spanish, but the German was pretty bad. I'm not paying full price for the DaVinci Code after this.
Rating:
Summary: boring boring boring
Review: You got some characters, you got some plot threads, but every thread is slow, dull and predictable. This is just not clever writing. Futhermore, the author clearly doesn't know anything technical, not about computers, not about cryptography. It shows ultimately, when a writer is just manipulating words as meaningless symbols.
Rating:
Summary: Astonishing-- a thriller about cryptanalysis!
Review: As a longtime student of cryptanalysis I have always felt that the solving of codes and ciphers was fascinating, but I never expected to see it as the central element in a thriller so fast-paced and "unputdownable" that I literally found myself losing sleep to keep reading it. Dan Brown is a master storyteller, there's no doubt about it. It's no small trick to take something as intricate as cryptology and transform it into a page-turning delight, but Brown has done precisely that. Whatever your politics, whatever you think about organizations like the NSA, you're bound to get caught up in this splendid novel as soon as you pick it up.
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