Rating: 
Summary: Canned techno-thriller
Review: I found this on my plane seat and plowed through the first 50 pages. The writing style reminds me of the dreck I cranked out for my high school creative writing assignments minutes before it was due. The crypto is wrong. If the NSA's computer could break a code in 10 minutes, wouldn't extending the key by 8 bits cause it to take 42 hours? And it wouldn't work on triple DES. If you know nothing about crypto, then you can hold your nose and waste a few hours of your life reading this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Fun, But Makes Little Sense
Review: Digital Fortress concerns the wild world of breaking secret codes and the way the NSA handles them and a new threat named Digital Fortress.The action is fast and hard. This is another 24-hour story (like Deception Point and Angels & Demons) and follows a similar formula. It is fun to read and a real page turner, but there are so many flaws that a reader may have their enjoyment derailed. Lets look at a few of the flaws. First, apparently in the minds of intelligent people, the NSA is just or rumor or they have never heard of it at all. Not very realistic. If you have a super computer and you continually deny its very existence, you should probably not put it under a big glass dome in a major city (the one in the book is under such a dome; clear enough to see the stars at night). If a program is available for download on the Internet and you change it, it does not change the copies that people have already downloaded. There is a secure database separate from the Internet at the beginning of the book, but later it is described as fully connected and under siege from hackers just waiting to get into a system none of them knows exists. Put a bunch of very intelligent people together who can handle just about every problem, but at the end of the book start calling up wild goose theories and stats instead of the standard and obvious (which should have been their first choice). Have a bunch of people whose job is breaking codes and have them disbelieve that there is a code in front of them. There are also plenty of "historical" facts that need to be taken with a grain of salt as they reflect popular opinion of history and not what actually happened. Most of these problems will become evident and contextual if you read, or have read, the book. Still, as I said earlier, it is a fun and fast book. However, if you have read other Dan Brown books you will probably be able to figure out a lot as it follows the same formula.
Rating:
Summary: Page-Turner
Review: I really enjoyed this novel, though I felt it may have been "dumbed-down" a bit much. The plot twists (though some predictable) definitely keep the reader interested.
Rating: 
Summary: Digital Fortress
Review: Unlike some of the other reviews I think Dan Brown has a good book here. I believe there may be people out there that just don't understand the book, maybe over their heads. Its a book that is well worth reading. Remember this is a story not what really happens in the real world, just sit back by the fireplace and read and let you mind take you where no man has gone before. Larry Hobson - Author- " The Day Of The Rose"
Rating:
Summary: Good time killer, but not much more than that
Review: Dan Brown scored big time with "The Da Vinci Code", which was well done. The exhaust of a huge success like DVC is that the rest of the books that went nowhere come out of the woodwork and into the mainstream. Mr. Brown must have spent a lot of time in his youth figuring out crosswords, WHATZITS, word search, trivia, etc... As all of his characters thus far (may be unfair to say, as I have only read this book and DVC) have been 'de-coder fanatics.' Digital Fortress is no exception. Once you get passed the implausibility of the technical aspects of the story you can focus on the plot, which isn't bad. Though I would be remiss if I didn't say the plot is far less complicated than the puzzles within the story. I literally figured out the plot 1/3 through. Therfore I must label "Digital Fortress" predictable, but readable. A decent effort.
Rating:
Summary: Great start
Review: For a first book this is very good. But having read the Da Vinci Code first, this book clearly deserves 1 or 2 stars less. While the plot is a page-turner, it is not very deep and could've been about 100 pages shorter. In the middle of the book the story slows down and adds too many non-key elements. I will still read Brown's other books hoping he only improved from this good start.
Rating:
Summary: A good weekend read when you want to kill time
Review: I have so far read 4 of Dan Brown's books (Angel & Demons, DaVinci Code, Deception Point & Digital Fortress) and three features of his writings stand out. First, audacious plotlines; Brown does not believe in small measures but goes out on a limb. The plotlines are way over the top but have just that crucial amount of credibility to draw in a reader, even when he knows it is fiction. Second, the pace is mercilessly quick; the entire plot of the book plays out over a few days at most. Last but for me the best of all, his books have a wealth of esoteric information that one would not normally read about. I found myself enthralled by a never ending series of factoids that had me rushing to the Internet for explanation or elaboration.
Digital Fortress follows the above lines. A quick capsule : Set with a cryptographic background, it describes a battle of wits between a governmental agency focused on breaking codes (used by good and bad guys alike in order to forestall terrorism) with a former employee who passionately believes in individual privacy. In a rapid-fire series of thrust and counter-thrust, the action cuts between Washington and Madrid with the standard does of blood, explosions and romance. Unlike Brown's other novels, this is very undemanding of a reader's intelligence - the average reader will see the signposts well before the protagonists themselves.
Sadly, there are flaws aplenty that seriously impact the plot credibility. Apart from the likelihood of an amateur professor being used as a proxy agent, the ease of the bypassing of the Gauntlet anti-virus software, particularly when Gauntlet safeguards not only TRANSLTR but also the databank is simply not possible. In such a situation there would be multiple layers of safeguards, not just a single bypass attributable to a single individual no matter how senior. More to the point, having raised the whole issue of individual privacy vis-à-vis governmental oversight, Brown never follows through on the implications. A pity, as this is of key topical importance as well.
Nevertheless, this is a good weekend read when you want to just enjoy a story and not get too caught up in the process. Three stars for that, with a star each subtracted for the plot credibility lapses and inadequate research.
Rating: 
Summary: Two things - two dimensional and too many holes!
Review: I picked this book up for some beach reading while on vacation. Unfortunately, for the author, I was just finishing "Whirlwind, the last book in Clavell's "Asia Series" (ie - "Shogun", "Tai Pan", "Noble House", "Gai Jin", "King Rat" and "Whirlwind"). I couldn't help but compare Clavell's incredible level of detail, research, character richness and the mastery of his plot twists with Mr. Brown's work. Clavell transports you to another place and time, Mr. Brown transports you to a below average comic book. The dialogue is absolutely predictable and flat. The story begins with an interesting premise - what if someone created an encryption algorithm that the most massive code breaking computer could not break? The story and characters are unworthy of the premise. Mr. Brown demonstrates an almost absolute ignorance of a procedurally oriented universe. Who would leave a $2 Billion dollar computer virtually unguarded? What security official in his right mind would send an amateur to retrieve the "pass key" to the ultimate encrypter - alone, without support? What amateur in his right mind would accept such an assignment? And, Mr. Brown, anti-viral experts are rarely the people that handle soldering equipment in the real world of IT, unless (like me) they are IT managers of small companies. In big operations, there's a huge gulf between hardware technicians and software technicians, and never do the twain meet. Don't waste your time on this book or money on this book - no doubt, with the success of "The Da Vinci Code", this book will be turned into a forgettable movie that you can rent sometime within the next two years...
Rating: 
Summary: The bad guy wasn't obvious to me?!?
Review: In the middle of the night David Becker's help is requested by his fiancé's boss, the Deputy Director of Operations of the NSA. Fly to Spain and recover a dead man's belongings. Right now, the Lear Jet is waiting, and it's a matter of National Security. Than David's fiancé, Susan Fletcher, a genius code breaker employed by the NSA, is called in to work for an emergency. There is a truly 'Unbreakable' code available on the internet - soon to be auctioned off to the highest bidder, and the only chance the security of the United States has is for Susan to identify the dead man's secret partner. While in the background, there is now an assassin following David, and Susan is unaware that what she knows is only the tip of an intricate life and death plot.
This was an excellent action/mystery that had me guessing multiple times about who was actually pulling the strings.
Rating:
Summary: predictable but interesting
Review: I got this book after reading Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. Both books are similar in the sense that the "clever" parts of the stories are in fact not very clever. Sometimes it's obvious what the answer to one of the puzzles are, or what the characters need to do, yet Brown goes on for pages describing the characters' train of thought. While Brown is good at describing his characters' thoughts to the readers, after awhile the reader will begin to wonder how NSA agents can be so stupid. Most of the technical parts of the book are correct, but if you are a technical person, you may object to the liberties Brown takes in the technology he uses.
On the other hand, Dan Brown knows how to capture a reader's attention. I like his novels for the knowledge that he incorporates into them. Though Brown doesn't teach as much about crypography in this book as he did other things in the Da Vinci Code, it is still an interesting read. I finished the book in two days.
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