Rating: 
Summary: Not that great
Review: This book was very disappointing! My friend, who happens to live in Seville, recommended it with rave reviews, however as I read it the characters and the plot seemed to be very unbelievable. The main character, supposedly one of the smartest people in the country, came across as totally clueless and extremely slow witted in most of the situations. Also, this is very nitpicky, the way he described the cathedral and the tower of Giralda in Seville was way off! There aren't stairs leading to the top, there are ramps, except at the very top of the tower. Back when it was first built they used to ride horses to the top of the cathedral tower, so they built it with ramps instead. I know, I climbed the stinking thing. In any event, the book is a disappointment and I would not recommend it to anyone.
Rating: 
Summary: I liked the book a lot.
Review: Codes, ciphers, Enigma, American Black Chamber.....If any of these words intrigue you then Digital Fortress by Dan Brown might just be a book for you. For many years I have been interested in all facets of intelligence, from David Kahn's book, The Codebreakers to James Bamford's, The Puzzle Palace. These works described the processes from breaking codes and ciphers to how one of America's most secret organizations orchestrates the massive responsibility of gathering and interpreting all type and matter of intelligence. Dan Brown has done his research well in the creation of this novel. He has created characters that are very down to earth and very believable. The story itself is centered around the NSA, National Security Agency, how it operates, what it does and what it would like to do. Susan Fletcher a very intelligent and beautiful intellectual who is the head of the Crypto Group and her boyfriend David Becker, a university professor with a proclivity for languages, get entangled in some very interesting and dangerous situations. The action comes very fast and is well written. Brown puts several twists into this tale of the intelligence world and how it totally revolves around high powered computers and unbreakable algorithms. If you are a fan of techno fiction than you will find this a great and entertaining read. Beware ! The book is reminiscent of the movie "The Sting". You'll know what I mean when you get there. If you think it's all a conspiracy... then check out these books also: I just read a copy of Edgar Fouche's 'Alien Rapture,' which also blew me away. Fouche was a Top Secret Black Program 'insider', whose credibility has been verified over and over. Want to be shocked, check out Dr. Paul Hill's 'Unconventional Flying Objects' which NASA tried to ban, and always read the Amazon reviews.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Fiction
Review: Ignore the tech industry folks (he didn't write it as a technical manual for you!). This is a work of F_I_C_T_I_O_N. Look it up. As a work of fiction it is pretty good, and it was his first book (yes, his first. It came before Angels and Demons. It is not meant to be an attempt to 'cash in' on the popularity of 'DaVinci Code' as one reviewer stated). The book works very well for a thriller. If you are a tech industry person, perhaps you should give it a miss, as others seem to think the reseach doesn't live up to reality. But, in order to make a convincing thriller, you sometimes have to be allowed a little artistic licence. I still think 'Digital Fortress' is the best of Dan Brown's novels.
Rating:
Summary: Doesn't live up to his other books
Review: There are many, many problems with this book. So many, in fact, that I can't recommend you spend time reading the book. Here is my list: * The technical facts are just plain wrong in many places. They are so wrong, in fact, that if you are a software engineer by trade, you may be insulted. The details about cryptography, security, etc., read like they were written by someone who is a technical illiterate. * The plot is embarrassingly thin and predicable. Sure, there are a few twists and surprises, as youw would expect in a DB book, but overall, I guessed every major plot move before it happened. Very different from past books. * The characters aren't developed to any extent. They are two-dimensional with ridiculous sounding names and cardboard personalities. They make the book read like a made-for-TV movie. DB can and has done better work than this. Here's hoping that he returns to his prior form. I'm sorry, but I can't recommend this one.
Rating:
Summary: I loved it, and so did my son
Review: I bought this book rather reluctantly, sure that it couldn't stand up to "Angels & Demons" and "The DaVinci Code". In less than fifteen minutes, I was hooked. I will grant that Susan Fletcher is a less likeable central character than Robert Langdon, but it was still a thriller. Even more impressive, my fifteen year old son loved it. The kid has never read anything except Harry Potter, but he devoured this book in three days. He would get so excited, he would actually yell out loud at every plot twist (let me tell you, that's alot of yelling). We had our first book discussion ever that didn't include the word "Hogwarts". I would love to thank Dan Brown for that gift. Even though I work on a computer all day, I can't verify whether he got the computer engineering right, but who cares? It's fiction, for crying out loud! I don't want to read a stinking manual, I want to be entertained. And "Digital Fortress" did that very well.
Rating: 
Summary: What a piece of garbage
Review: I feel offended at the time I wasted reading this. Every single fact in the book is wrong. Everything it says about
cryptography, computer security and computers in general
is wrong. Even the names of the Japanese characters are
not valid Japanese names! It's all an excuse for a "racy"
plot which is clearly "made for TV", things like the
main computer burning spectacularly releasing "poisonous"
silicon fumes. Oh, and the twelve-ton Enigma machine! "Poorly
researched" doesn't even start to capture the awfulness of
everything factual in the book. The rest of the plot and
story is wooden and implausible too, by the way.
Rating:
Summary: Wretched, abysmal, simpleminded
Review: I'm struggling for adjectives to describe what a wreck this book is. The plot is transparent, the technical facts are repeatedly, stupefyingly wrong, and it's written at a level that's surpassed by most schlock romance novels. It's bad enough that the author confuses the number of characters in a string with the number of bits of information that string holds (clue: an ASCII character has 8 bits of information, not 1!), but he does so repeatedly and makes it an important part of the story. The central plot point is that a cryptographer has invented a new encryption scheme, and has used the only implementation to encrypt...the only implementation. The NSA is trying brute force key searching (guessing all possible keys) to find the decryption key, so that they can decrypt the program and learn how it works. Brute force key searching is only valuable if you already know the encryption algorithm. Ergo, the key is worthless to them because even with it, they couldn't decrypt the secret because they didn't have an implementation of the algorithm (or even know what it was). A classic, and unsolvable, chicken and egg problem. I could go on, but I'll just say if you want to read something that won't insult your intelligence, look for something by Neal Stephenson (_Cryptonomicon_ is excellent).
Rating: 
Summary: set reality aside and it's enjoyable
Review: This book moves fast, is entertaining, and is reasonably well written. For anyone enjoying his other books, it has the same kinds of twists and "surprises", meaning they're somewhat becomming formula. He pulls it off well, but I had a few problems with the book that just detracted too much for me to ignore. >> Some plot spoilers follow << For one, the premise that an encrypted virus could infect your computer is kind of far fetched. In the context of decrypting data, whatever the payload, the contents would not be activated. (Similarly, if you decrypt a recipie for making poisoned cookies, simply reading the recipie doesn't poison your family.) In order for the machine to be infected, it would have to be first decrypted, and then the contents would have to be executed as program instructions... something that would never happen automatically in the process of decryption. Oh, the main hero, while searching for a girl he never met, hops on a bus, takes it to a club, sits at a table, and just so happens to have taken a guy's seat that knows where the girl went--the airport. So he goes to the airport, and guess who the first person is that he finds? Yep, there she is. He dodges bullets too, outsmarting a professional killer. As usual. If these kinds of totally unrealistic coincidences don't bother you, then you'll probably like the book a lot.
Rating:
Summary: cardboard characters in a video game
Review: Too bad, there might have been a book here, but wooden characters and stodgy plot creaking along certainly doesn't make it worth the reading time.. actually you can read it really quickly by reading every other page. You won't miss anything.
Rating:
Summary: Pull the plug!
Review: If you make it to the end, you'll understand my title. During the "crisis" at the end, this was all I could think of yet, for some reason, the characters wouldn't do it. Brown evidently forgot that to write a good book, some research into your subject is necessary and that the plot lines have to be some what plausible. NSA computers connected to the internet. Lame computer-ese. Shallow characters. Ridiculous plot twists. A puzzle at the end a 7 year old could solve. This book has 'em all. If this book were made into a movie, the'd show the actors typing on computer keyboards that make teletype noises and monitors that show the characters they type so large, there are only a few lines of text on the screen. Avoid this book like a virus. I wish I had. In fact, I think Dan Brown, the author, owes me a couple of hours of my life back. The only good thing it didn't cost me any money. I borrowed it from the library.
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