Rating: 
Summary: not his best stuff
Review: My least favorite of his books.
Rating:
Summary: A little disappointing
Review: Maybe I expected too much after just finishing the DaVinci Code. DaVinci was meticulously researched and Brown revealed the whole story like he was peeling layers of an onion. I read DaVinci in one sitting. I literally could not put it down.Digital Fortress was in the same vein as DaVinci. The formula is almost point for point a close of DaVinci. This is a complex mystery with believable and well developed characters. What bothered me was much of it did just did not make much sense. I don't wish to spoil the novel for anyone who has not read it yet so I won't go into any of the major plot elements or twists, but for example: If the NSA was supposedly stumped by an unbreakable cypher and the algorthm source code was available even if encrypted, then why would the NSA want to destroy the key and the code? If the algorthm really was unbreakable by their billion dollar beast I would have wanted to study every aspect of the code not destroy it without ever seeing it. How could they be sure there was not another copy or some other programmer would not redevelop one just like it in a year? Makes no sense, no one questioned this. Susan should have been all over it, but she insisted it be destroyed. The other bothersome things was Brown supposedly used the technical advice of retired NSA cryptographers to add techincal realism. However several plot elements made no technical sense. For example: If the Fortress code was posted encrypted using fortress itself, you would need more than just the passkey. You would need the Fortress program itself to decrypt it using the passkey. Just having the passkey only would not be enough. If the fortress program was available in a compiled format then the NSA could have easily (maybe not easily -but I am sure they could do it) decompiled the program to reveal the algorthm. Having the passkey would not be vital to understanding Fortress. The passkey alone would not have been enough to open up the encrypted files. Neither would a "brute force" attack on Fortress have ever been able to crack it. It would have to have analyzed and broken structurally. Brute force requires you to have the algorthm to begin with then you guess the passkey by using all the possible combinations. Without the Fortress program they would have had nothing with which to attack the encrypted file. If they had the Fortress program already they would have had to waste time brute forcing it. This is a Catch-22 scenario This is monumental technical error and destroyed much of my enjoyment of what is a very well written thriller. I will stop there as many of my other issues would be classified as "spoilers". Overall this was a good story but the technical errors are inexcusable in a novel written by an author of Dan Browns skill.
Rating: 
Summary: Learn to write before you judge the writing of others
Review: It is interesting to see the "All or Nothing" reviews of virtually all of Dan Brown's work. But it seems that most of the "one star" reviewers somehow expected a science textbook rather than a novel. I'd guess they would go nuts reading DALE Brown and some of his "type" who write exiting stories with their own "created" science
By the way, as a retired professor with 22 yrs. of college and two PhD's, who has been reading scientific fact and fiction since the 1940s, the only thing I ask of the author is for the "science" to be CONSISTANT in how it is used.
LAST, I'D SAY THAT THE CRITIC WHO CAN'T SPELL URANIUM OR PLUTONIUM SHOULD GO BACK TO HIGH SCHOOL (WHERE NO ONE BUT THE TEACHER HAS ANY IDEA OF THE CONCEPTS OF NUCLEAR FISSION) AND TRY LOOKING FOR A STUDENT TO HELP. THEN FIGURE OUT HOW EINSTEIN CAUSED SO MANY BASEBALL BATS TO BREAK THESE DAYS.
Rating: 
Summary: Page turner
Review: Authors of novels about computers seem to struggle with turning the abstract digital world into something tangible, and Dan Brown is no exception. Yes, anyone with a shred of knowledge about computers will cringe a few times over Brown's it's-an-advanced-computer-so-it-must-be-magic approach, but I really don't think including source code and core dumps would have improved the book. After all, it tells enough about cryptography to talk-the-talk; if you want to walk-the-walk you'd do better with a textbook on number theory. Of course it's inaccurate, but if you can get over that, you'll enjoy it. The novel's main protagonist, the NSA's head cryptographer Susan Fletcher, basically gets no characterization beyond a minor character's musing that it's "Hard to imagine [her legs] support a 170 IQ," but for the book's purposes we really don't need much other than that. Despite the supposed IQ, I almost always beat both her and her fiancee to the solutions to the various enigmas throughout the book, but there are definitely some unexpected twists towards the end. With an average chapter length of 2.86 pages, the pages fly by, and I read "just one more chapter" so many times that I ended up finishing the book in one sitting. Total hack writing, but it's good hack.
Rating: 
Summary: Too Many Mistakes
Review: There are just too many mistakes in this book, that the author even made things up against historical facts. Computer technology stuff aside, I have to point out another major mistake the author made: In the novel, at the end, it took the scientists way too long time to figure out that the unlock key is the element mass difference between Urinum 235 and Urinum 238, because the author claimed that both atomic bomb dropped in Japan in 1945 were Urinium bombs. However, the fact is, only the bomb dropped in Hiroshima was Urinium Bomb (on August 6, 1945); The other bomb dropped on August 9, 1945 in Nagasaki, was instead a more advanced Plutunium bomb! Not Urinium bomb at all. This can be easily double checked or verified by simply asking a high school student! I think the book is rushed out to cash in on the author's fame on DVC book, and it indeed showed us how sloppy the process is.
Rating:
Summary: Lack of research ruined an intriguing plot
Review: Having worked in software, physical security, and with cryptography, I was intrigued by the topic. Unfortunately, Dan Brown failed to do much research before writing this book. It reminds me of an essay that I wrote at the last minute in English 101. The grammer was correct, but none of the facts were accurate. Virtaully all of the elements in the book were wrong; from the types of physical security that would be used by the NSA, to the computer security methods, to the isotopes and seperation methods used in the Hirosima and Nagasaki bombs. It was like watching "The Land Of The Giants" ... improbable and incredible. Don't waste your money on the book.
Rating:
Summary: HIST KOBO KUSSC
Review: If you deciphered the title of this post, you've just used more brain power than required by this "novel"
After reading DVC and visiting Dan's site, I was hoping for another fun read sprinkled with interesting facts and revelations. What a great topic - the ambiguous morality of an all seeing protector, high tech intrigue, inner secrets of the NSA, etc. - too bad it was so uninteresting, not to mention sophomoric. He barely touches on the complex issues involved in the safety vs security debate. The characters are two dimentional and the dialogue is about as sophisticated as that written by a high school freshman. I finished the damn thing, always hoping the cool part was around the corner. Nada. Who didn't figure out that the difference between uranium 238 and uranium 235 is 8 about four pages before the geniuses of the NSA?
Rating:
Summary: A lack of research and an insult to intelligence
Review: The book is dull, full of false cliches and loaded with wrong information. If the people at the NSA are that intelligent, we are heading for a disaster. The characters are coming from a third rate story and behaves like kids in kindergarden. As you read along, you keep asking yourself : "Can they be that stupid?" IF Susan Fletcher has IQ of 170 then we are all geniuses and the IQ system is flawed.
Mr Brown should check his sources and respect his readers by doing some research. As you read the book, you would think that Spain is a third world country with very poor medical system and where everything is dirty. It is rather offending and makes you want to scream at this display of cultural ignorance and blind stupidity.
But it is not the first book where one notices a lack of accuracy and strong bias towards cliches and preconveived ideas
Don't waste your time and money. An tell your friends, we are the victims of publicity and they think we are fools.
Rating:
Summary: A waste of time and your money
Review: This book is really an insult to those who has a brain. What can I say? I definitely would not buy into the author's the other hype: the "D.V. Code". The plot in this story is so dull and plain, you almost predict it from the beginning: when Susan Fletcher (the main character) over and over agin mentioned at the beginning that there are no "unbreakable code", you almost immediately suspect whatever is running in that TRANSLTR machine is just a decoy for "unbreakable code", and the true purpose was to implant virus. GUESS WHAT? THAT WAS THE WHOLE PLOT of the book! How disappointed it is! Also, the love story and David Becker's journey in Spain to successfully retrieve the ring was so irrelevant to the plot and so dull, you have to be a real idiot to believe it is remotely possible. Needless to say, as other reviewers pointed out, the mistakes author made regarding computer technology are too many. Save your time and money!
Rating:
Summary: Outdated, dumb and wrong on the facts
Review: As a fan of DVC and Dan Brown's other works, I was hopeful that this would be a hidden gem. Boy was I disappointed. Had I read this five years ago, I might have been more impressed -- I wouldn't have known the depth of plot devices' ignorance and silliness. I cannot recommend this read. Stick with Angels & Devils and DVC. Deception Point isn't bad. Better than this one.
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