Rating: 
Summary: A Good Book, But Not As Great as Later Books
Review: I think that one of the most interesting facets of this novel is to see Dan Brown's writing evolve. This was his first real novel, and it was rather more simplistic in certain ways than his later novels. That is not to say that it is a bad book; it is excellent and well worth the price of admission. However, the characterizations are not quite as rich, the plots are a bit easier to see through, and so on. This is not necessarily a bad thing, it is just that Mr. Brown had not fully developed his style as a professional writer yet.This novel was about cryptographers and teachers. Much as always, geeks are the heroes in this work, and they are good ones at that. Mr. Brown seems to be quite interested in secrets and also in teaching them to others. All four of his most popular books (Digital Fortress, Deception Point, Angels and Demons, and The Da Vinci Code) center on rather covert agencies and ideas and in all of them there is a pedagogical figure who is interested in explaining to others the secrets and how they are kept. In the end, this novel follows the general pattern of all of his and of all action-suspense works. It is a fairly well-defined genre. However, the joy in Mr. Brown's work is not in its inherent originality; rather, it is in learning new things (which happens for most of us with each of his books...he has a rather esoteric collection of wisom and makes some positively strange and delightful connections), watching the geeks save the day, and seeing the characters live up to their potentials. Much like his other books, this is a great work, and it is definately worthwhile. If you read only one book this month, read this book. (I have difficulties with the conception that the average American reads one book each year...). Buy it, read it, enjoy it, and share it. Lovely book, Mr. Brown. Great stuff. Keep it up.
Harkius
Rating: 
Summary: Whew, just in time!
Review: I had ordered "Angels & Demons" with this and Amazon only shipped Digital Fortress to me so far. Thank goodness, for after reading the first 50 pages of this "Thriller" I was persuaded to cancel Angels & Demons from my order before it shipped! Yeah, its that bad. I think I should have known better than to trust someone who's bio reads like an application for a grad school English major. He makes the mistake of trying to write about technology without having the slightest clue how to do so realistically. (Is there a big door in NSA that has the abbreviation "CRYPTO" on it like it was even a real word?) Had he researched cryptology and cryptography just a little bit he would have rewritten the book from scratch or simply quit, its that beyond the pale. If you don't know the first thing about computers and agree with the philosophy that Big Brother should be able to read your mail for you own good, you may actually enjoy the ultra-conservative ill-informed rhetoric of this novel. That is if you can believe that a character with a 170?! IQ can act like a giddy, stupid child and that a code can be written that's unbreakable just because it has a tricky algorithm that is kept a secret. I'd like to think Mr. Brown has grown a great deal as an author since this outing, but I'm not going to gamble my money on it ever again.
Rating: 
Summary: Too Predictable
Review: This was my third Dan Brown book - and the least interesting. I highly recommend you try the Da Vinci Code or Angels and Demons which were more enjoyable.
Rating:
Summary: A stupid book with a wooden plot
Review: I have no idea if Dan Brown's other books are as bad as this one.
Certainly the Da Vinci Code has gotten good reviews. In fact,
it was on the basis of these reviews that I picked up this book
in paperback. Unfortunately, even by the standards of Tom
Clancy, this book is a howler. In a work of fiction we expect that the author invents a plot,
characters and setting. Unless the fictional work is based
entirely in a fictional world, I expect that the author will
have done at least some basic research, building the plot
from easily known fact. This is certainly not Dan Brown's
style. In the opening of the book we find that the NSA is willing
to double the industry salary offers of the best and the
brightest to assure that they have access to the best talent.
This does not resembly any government job I've ever heard of.
NSA jobs, like other government jobs, follow government pay
scale and are certainly not known for their largess. The
mistakes continue in an opening scene in a government security
facility protected by a dome able to withstand a "2 megaton"
nuclear blast. Then we have near magical computing technology
which, darn, is put in danger by a single software developer.
There are also egregious slams against the Electronic Frountiers
Foundation (EFF) and anyone else who wants to put barriers in the
ways of the NSA. In the acknowledgements Brown claims to have corresponded with
two cryptographers at the NSA via anonymous remailers. If this
is true, what ever wisdom they attempted to impart seems to have
been lost on Brown. He does not seem to have read basic books
like The Puzzle Palace or Applied Cryptography. On top of this shaky plot foundation are predictable characters
who are little more than cardboard cutouts. Even Tom Clancy's
worst is better than this. So my recommendation is leave this
insult to dead threes ...
Rating:
Summary: Badly written
Review: Plot is a mindless string of cliches. From the technical standpoint, the book is filled with nonsensical mumbo jumbo that will immiediately annoy anybody who's ever used a computer. All of the so-called "computer science" is simply made up, with no basis in reality. Read it if you want to waste time and learn nothing. Terrible. p.s. I thought Da Vinci Code was excellent. What a disappointment this is.
Rating:
Summary: Unitelligent and Uninspired - no thrills in this Fortress
Review: "Digital Fortress" hints at being a thinking man's technothriller - using codes and human intuition instead of fighter jets and nu-cue-ler subs. Instead, it's full of implausible characters and uninspired plot twists, always seeming sure that it's much smarter than it really is. THE PLOT: a now dead computer programmer has created a seemingly unbreakable code, the eponymous "Digital Fortress", setting off a fierce hunt for its code key. While the key to DF is distributed on the internet, it's buried within the code itself. Whoever unlocks the code will have access to the ultimate protection against decryption. Hostile governments, organized criminals or terrorists will be able to communicate freely over the internet completely immune to detection. Fearing this, the NSA - the US agency responsible for gathering signals information and cracking codes - sends free-lance genius Dave Becker to Seville, where the programmer died. Trevor Strathmore, the NSA's head code breaker hopes that DF's creator left some clue to the code key behind. Unfortunately, Becker isn't alone on his hunt... Meanwhile, back at the NSA's high-tech HQ, Susan Fletcher, our hero's brilliant and sexy NSA genius of a girlfriend - tries picking up the mystery from her end of the Atlantic, where Strathmore's newest supercomputer is busy melting itself down trying to crack DF. Unfortunately, it looks like somebody is on Susan's trail as well - from the inside - and we get the hint that she shouldn't feel as safe as she does when Strathmore is around. Back in Seville, Becker quickly learns that DF's creator had worn a ring when he died - but it's missing. Quickly guessing that inscriptions on the ring say more than "one ring to rule them all", our hero tracks it across Spain, learning how quickly it moves from owner to owner. Unfortunately, whoever owns the ring (even briefly) is marked for death by a mysterious assassin - a deaf killer who never misses, and catalogs his kills on a Palm Pilot. HOWEVER: I can't believe that this novel is as popular as reviewers make it sound. It's not only strikingly unintelligent, but strikingly arch. Brown learned more about cryptography and the NSA than most people cared to hear about, and thus crafted a novel based on his "insider" info about cryptography. (Brown's story heavily relies on a perceived ignorance of what the NSA stands for - an agency, he writes, that only a small percentage of Americans understand. Rather than showing that Brown is a writer who has learnt what most us can't, "Digital Fortress" proves that Brown focuses on remote subjects not likely to have a large number of experts who can effectively challenge his pretensions of realism. Actually, I learned more about cryptography while writing a paper about the Walker Family Spy Ring in high school, and most will probably learn more about the NSA watching "Sneakers" or "Good Will Hunting". How do you like them apples?) Instead of intelligent clues, Brown's story builds on arcane trivia (the etymology of the word "sincere", certain technical details distinguishing the different a-bombs used against Japan). I was able to piece together some of Brown's clues, not because I'm smarter than most, but simply because I watch a lot of the History channel. Getting past the "thrill" and "techno" aspects of the story, what's left is thin - Brown's ring-plot provides an excuse to send our hero across Seville, hunting the ring, making this less of a novel of any genre than a college-writing version of "Where I Went Last Summer" (complete with Spanish dialog repeated in English). Brown's thin story is plumped, not with some redeeming characters of depth and intelligent plot turns, but with unbelievably stupid characters and unbelievable plot twists. Our hero is no action hero (he stays in shape playing racquetball), yet he manages to elude the hitman who has carved a path of precision-guided death across Seville. Susan is beautiful and brilliant - though Brown never leaves us doubting as to which half matters more (Susan is probably the least independent, most vulnerable, unintelligent and otherwise dated female character I've seen in any technothriller; even her smarts are just a convenient device to explain why she's working with the NSA.) Strathmore is supposed to be a cryptographer par excellence, yet he defies belief - he's so obsessed with DF that he rams it into his super-codebreaking computer, bypassing security checks meant to protect it from viruses. He does this despite knowing that DF is obviously more than it appears (its code for heaven's sake!!). There's another NSA co-worker, a guy who's supposed to set off our alarm bells, but it's obvious that Brown only means him to distract us from Strathmore since Brown couldn't be bothered to come up with more characters. Like Strathmore, the rest of the denizens of NSA headquarters are so dim, it's inconceivable that they'd be trusted to run a third rate ISP, let alone the most sophisticated code-breaking computer in the world. (Typical for low-grade technothrillers, Brown is so obsessed credentialing his characters as geniuses, he devotes little time to writing them even slightly smart.) By the climax, I couldn't care whether the NSA would be destroyed by the killer code, mostly because the author had by then changed from telling a story to giving a pitch for some splashy action movie, making the novel's Hollywood aspirations annoyingly clear. In short, storm some other fortress.
Rating: 
Summary: A good first crack at a formula he perfects later
Review: Like so many of the reviewers here, I got hooked on Dan Brown with DaVinci Code. A great, fun read. He makes you feel like you've taken the worlds most exciting university class. He is a thinking person's Clive Cussler.
DaVinci Code inspired me to read Angels and Demons and Digital Fortress. They have gotten progressively weaker in my mind (which means his work has gotten progressively better since I'm reading in reverse chronological order).
Digital Fortress absolutely kept my attention and interest. However, I have two main gripes.
SPOILERS TO FOLLOW
Each of the three books I mention have exactly the same plot and twist structure: An academic is pulled unwillingly into a James Bond movie; he hooks up with a beautiful, brilliant woman; the bad guy ALWAYS turns out to be the mentor figure; and there is a mysterious, somehow deformed assasin who we come to learn is in the employ of the mentor. After you've read one book, the suspense is gone.
Also, as brilliant as these characters are supposed to be, I consistently guess the clues before they do and I'm no university professor. Digitial Fortress is the worst offender of the last type.
Nevertheless, Brown is in a special class and I do look forward to his follow up to DaVinci Code.
Rating:
Summary: A Well Paced Thriller
Review: Not the same quality as Angels and Demons or the Da VInci Code but all in all a fine book.
Rating:
Summary: If you're looking for a fast read, keep looking...
Review: Prior to picking up Digital Fortress I had read all of Dan Brown's other works, and had been hugely impressed with his complex plotting, research, and attention to detail. None of those traits were apparent in this book, which made for a wide gap between my expectations going in and the experience I ended up having. If you read a lot of mysteries/thrillers, you're going to have the next plot twist figured out pages ahead of it actually being revealed. Character development is clumsy and tedious. We learn about bit players like the DCI's assistant and a secretary in excrutiating detail, when they aren't key to the main story. I also found myself saying "Yeah, right" more than once due the the unbelievability of certain characters. For instance, Jabba (the head of IT) continuously berates and insults his boss, the DCI (this is the most powerful spymaster in the known world) in front of other low-level government employees. Like that's gonna ever happen in real life! In any good novel (or movie for that matter) there's a certain concept called suspension of disbelief, which is critical to the success of larger-than-life tales, of which this is one. It never kicked in on this book, and I found myself constantly thinking about the writing instead of enjoying the story. Even if you're a diehard Dan Brown fan like me, take a pass on this book - you'll be glad you did.
Rating:
Summary: and of course she is beautiful
Review: I could repeat what many have already said about how interesting and thrilling this novel is, but that would be repetative. I will simply say that I gave it less than a perfect review because Brown did the same thing so many authors do..made the female beautiful like that is a prerequisite for being brilliant. Just Once I wish an author would trust his/her audience to judge a character on their depth and not have to make then "Eye turning" beautiful. It is such a cliche and hurts every book that contains this stock female character. How many booms ahve you read where the female co-star walks into a restaurant and all eyes turn to gawk at her beauty. Enough already!
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