Rating: 
Summary: Who are the good guys?
Review: ***Warning: Plot spoilers ahead!***How does one write a novel about something that ends up being non-existent by the end of the book? Welcome to "Digital Fortress." Dan Brown, best-selling author of "The Da Vinci Code," pens an adequate practice run with "Digital Fortress"...but only adequate. It spins a "what if" scenario about a government agency that wants badly to have access to all digital communications globally in order to "serve and protect." This big brother plot is interesting enough to hook the reader, but once inside the story, there are no characters with whom to sympathize. Who are the bad guys and who are the good guys? By the end of the novel I still had no clear idea of who the author was wanting me to like and who to hate, and that apathy made me ask why I'd bothered to read to the finish? Perhaps that's why "Digital Fortress" didn't put the author on the map, but will become a sort of "backhanded" bestseller based on "The Da Vinci Code."
Rating: 
Summary: A laughably horrible book
Review: Some suspense thrillers keep you on the edge of your seat, and impress you with the research of the author and their ability to keep you guessing until the final pages. This is not one of those books. Staying within the 1k word limit of this review, I'll just point out the few bits that drove me crazy, and might make you laugh out loud: ? The #2 person at NSA has the rank of Commander (O-5)? DIRNSA typically is a 4-star. And anyone who retires from the Navy with the rank of CMDR does not ask his co-workers to call him that as an honorific. ? Mandarin Chinese characters (sic) can be mistake for Japanese Kanji? ?The key device in the book is a supercomputer called TRANSLTR. It is used in dialog in this form throughout. How is that pronounced? Do you pronounce each letter? Something an editor should have caught. ? Mainframe computers have motherboards? You fix "motherboards" installed in mainframes by crawling under them with a soldering gun??? ?Senior NSA cryptologists apparently aren't tied to the federal payscale, and drive Lotus' and such, while working in their latte-filled, dot.bom-style playhouse at Ft. Meade. Pluh-eese! ?The most ultrasecret data bank in the entire US government, which includes EVERYTHING secret, from DoJ witness protection program IDs to CIA covert ops, IS CONNECTED TO THE INTERNET?!?! ? The ultra-hyper-super-powerful computer at the heart of NSA's cryptographic analysis has 33 million processors and some kind of quantum computing thingy. SaaayWhaaat? Pick of a copy of Creighton's "Timeline" and then try to imagine how quantum computing somehow got tacked onto the internals of a 33-million-processor binary beast. Other than being shaped like a phallus, the concept fails the laugh test. The dialog is terrible, there is no character development. It uses every cliche in the genre, and is entertaining only if you 1) like to read badly-constructed novels or 2) are remarkably gullible. The author seems to think that the only kind of code consists of PGP-style public/private key-based encryption. Even the most trivial amount of research would have shown that crypto is a rich field, and the best codes are not subject to brute-force attacks. The only reason I finished this poorly-researched, poorly-written book is because I wanted to find out just how clumisly it would lurch to its obvious conclusion. On the plus side, I liked the jacket design and typeface. My copy may still be in a men's room at LAX. Save your $$; buy anything written by Neal Stephenson instead.
Rating: 
Summary: "Fantastic & Thrilling To The Very End"
Review: The battleground is cyberspace and beautiful Susan Fletcher (head crytographer and mathematician) has her job cut out for her as she tries to break a code the NSA'S code-breaking machine cannot. The race for time is on as Susan battles to save the country and her life after being betrayed on all sides. DIGITAL FORTRESS by creative writer DAN BROWN is a sure to be BESTSELLER with this MUST READ NOVEL...A novel you won't want to miss! (Highly Recommended!)
Rating: 
Summary: I like the style of the book, not the subject matter
Review: The National Security Agency has been working for years on a method to intercept and crack any code or encrypted message sent via E-Mail across the globe. They finally developed a machine so powerful that it can decode even the toughest messages in just a matter of minutes. The machine is dubbed TRANSLTR. The existence of TRANSLTR is threatened when a bitter, crippled Japanese programmer threatens to release an encryption method that TRANSLTR can't crack: Digital Fortress. Digital Fortress is placed up on the web, encrypted in itself so that only those with the passcode can unlock it. The NSA learns the programmer is working with a partner as a safety measure. If he should die, the partner will publish the passcode within 24 hours. The programmer is found dead in Spain and the NSA must race the clock to obtain both passcodes before it is too late. The whole idea that keeping Digital Fortress out of the hands of the public was a life or death situation seemed a little too weighty for me. I believe the basic idea of Digital Fortress is that the encryption was constantly revolving, making it impossible for a computer to guess when the correct passcode had been entered. Anyone in the computer world knows that everything has a workaround. It may be that Digital Fortress would make TRANSLTR extinct, but necessity is the mother of invention and people would eventually figure out how to break into a file encrypted by Digital Fortress. Therefore, the book seemed a little bloody to me. People were taking the issue WAY too seriously. If you put the absurdity of the subject matter aside, I still enjoyed the book. I'm really starting to like Dan Brown's work. I've also read the Da Vinci Code and both books are filled with information you may not have previously known (such as where the term "sincerely" really comes from). They were also both written in real-time. I absolutely love books written in real-time. No skipping ahead three months and losing a portion of the person's life. No thought or detail left unattended. It was a good, dark read that I really enjoyed. I can't wait to delve into some of Dan Brown's other works.
Rating:
Summary: A Real Comedown
Review: Having read The Davinci Code and having been fascinated by the research, I wanted to read other works by this author. This is the first of his books, chronologically, and when it is compared to his other work, is found to be the most disappointing. The plot is most predictable and the excitement that exists at the beginning tends to wear thin. As his first published work, it is possible to see how much he has grown as a writer. Although the book is a rapid read, it pales in comparison to his other works.
Rating:
Summary: Do your research!
Review: I know nothing about cryptography or supercomputers, so I can't tell whether there are major or minor inaccuracies in Brown's descriptions of them (though, judging from the reviews, there are.) But I do know a little bit about Japanese, and in the first few pages of the novel there is a bit about how Becker is decoding into Mandarin Chinese, and suddenly tells them that all the characters he has translated are also part of "Kanji language," a Japanese writing system, and that in "Kanji language" these Chinese characters have different meanings. All wrong. No one calls it "kanji language," for starters. And characters used in Japanese as kanji (the word means "Chinese characters") have the same meaning in Japanese as they do in Chinese. If you had a sequence of kanji, you would be missing a lot of grammar in Japanese, but the meaning would be clear. It would be like a sequence of nouns and verbs, maybe adjectives. A first year student of Japanese could have explained it to Brown. So when I see a flaw like that on page 9, I wonder how he did with the far more technical stuff. But his plot tricks are clever, and I read the whole thing with a grain of salt and enjoyed the ride. Not as good as Da Vinci and Angels and Demons; closer to Deception Point. He's got me hooked on thrillers, however, and now I'll have to find another author to read.
Rating:
Summary: A riveting thriller that will keep you up too late
Review: Dan Brown has been getting a lot of press lately for his most recent novel, *The DaVinci Code*, which debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list. *Digital Fortress*, Brown's first book (published in 1998), is another taut, intelligent thriller designed to keep you up late. Just as *The DaVinci Code*, *Digital Fortess* is peopled by highly intelligent characters. Susan Fletcher, brilliant mathematician/cryptographer, and her linguistically accomplished fiance David Becker are both caught up in a plot against the National Security Agency's secret--indeed, officially nonexistent--super computer. With the brute force of its three million processors, TRANSLTR is capable of breaking any code in an average of about six minutes. Or it is, at least, until the action of the book begins, when TRANSLTR is fifteen hours into at attempt to crack a code its creator claims is unbreakable. The clock ticks loudly in this book as David, Susan, and other NSA employees work to break the code and/or discover its pass-key before the algorithm is made public and/or a computer worm destroys the security protecting the United States' most confidential information. Meanwhile, an assassin is dogging Becker's steps in Spain, an NSA employee may be in cahoots with the author of the code, and a zealous security guard is pushed to his death in the bowels of the super computer's housing. Some of the plot twists in *Digital Fortress* are predictable, but this hardly detracts from the book. Brown's debut novel is a riveting thriller you'll find hard to put down.
Rating:
Summary: MMeenan
Review: I was given this book before a business trip. I'm not normally a reader of fiction. Working in the IT field I find myself reading mostly technical books. Digital Fortress was a pleasant surprise. It was a fast and entertaining read. I'd recommend it on its ability to deliver a good story. Its technical details take some expected artistic freedom. All in all, it is worth the read. MM
Rating:
Summary: fine 'til the end...
Review: A well-written thriller with a clever and original premise, it captured me and I read it through in a single day. Imagine my disappointment, indeed anger, at the incredibly stupid ending.
I suppose etiqutte prohibits my revealing it but it both denies history and denies science. It was equivalent to a premise that, contrary to popular belief, FDR wasn't actually the president during the Second World War. I just couldn't beleive that Brown actually used this mindless device to end an otherwise enjoyable book.
Rating: 
Summary: Definitely can tell...
Review: ...that this is one of his early novels. The character development and plot twists are nowhere near as intricate as in Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code (the first two books of his I read -- and adore). I kept waiting for the big climax of the story, but it never happened. Maybe that's because I was able to figure out who the villian was by page 100. Still, not a bad way to pass a rainy afternoon.
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