Rating: 
Summary: I'll give it 4 and a half stars because...
Review: It's at least Dan Brown trying his best to come up with something at least a little closer to high tech science fiction and cyberpunk, such as "Foundation", "Stranger in a Strange Land", "Puppet Masters", "Childhood's End", "Neuromancer", "Cryptonomicon", "Darkeye: Cyber Hunter", and so forth.
Rating: 
Summary: not the Da Vinci code...
Review: This book was a let down after reading the Da Vinci code. It was an average "airplane book," and not a mind-blowing puzzle book like the Da Vinci Code. I think that Digital Fortress is a bit predictable, and although I didn't really put it down, I was reading it on an airplane (with nothing else to read), and I just wanted to get through it so I could start something else. If you loved the Da Vinci Code, I would recommend Digital Fortress, but if you only "liked" the Da Vinci Code, I would recommend skipping Digital Fortress.
Rating: 
Summary: Just like DVC
Review: What a book. It starts with a murder, has a smart good lookin' woman and a smart man, AND an assassin. Yes, the DaVinci Code....no wait, we were talking about Digital Fortress, weren't we? All I really need to say is that after four "eye-rolls" in the first three pages, I should have burned this piece of crap (it was borrowed from a friend, thankfully, so I couldn't destroy it). THREE! It's THREE you idiots! That's probably what I'll remember most from this loser. The only good thing I can say about it is that I didn't waste money on it.
Rating:
Summary: Nice book but the quest for the "Ring" just doesn't cut it
Review: It is nice book if you have a lot of time to kill. It has a very good intro, and it will get you addicted once you start reading. As you are almost half way through the book, you notice that its only focus is about finding the missing ring. After about 350 pages, however, the plot starts to unravel to readers with predictable result. Towards the end, it turns out that the whole quest about the ring has nothing to do with the outcome. It does make readers think "What? Why do you make me waste my time to read something that doesn't contribute to the ending?" Oh well, it is a love story too, and the author tries to place the thrill in a good ending while spicing it up with all the general facts and mystifying it with "code breaking" I have done programming in the past, and the German machine enigma didn't fancy me that much, but apparently, author thinks we all gasp and "woo" and "wow" Buy this book if you truly want to kill time or if you are very much into the Lord of the Ring :) Without wax,
ThunderRiver
Rating:
Summary: NOT BAD....BUT NOT GREAT
Review: After having read "The Da Vinci Code" and "Angels & Demons" I was ready to attempt to crack another mystery thriller by Dan Brown. The previous books were a challenge to solve but "Digital Fortress" did not measure up. The basic plot of a super computer "code breaker" gone mad was interesting but it was evident within the first 75 pages that the mystery was going to be easily solved. The charcters were given highly educated credentials but didn't seem very brilliant when it came to solving fairly obvious clues. This was very evident in the last part of the book when the computer printed out the "Ceasar's Box" algorithm. A room full of scientists and UBER computers geeks took forever to come up with the simple answer "3".
Perhaps because this was Dan Brown's first book and he hadn't mastered the skill he showed in "The Da Vinci Code" and "Angels and Demons" that I wasn't overly impressed with this effort. If you've read other books by him you'll quickly see that he follows a similar formula for each of his books. While this book wasn't bad, it doesn't come close to his later work. If this is your first Dan Brown book you'll probably enjoy the read but if you've read his other books first, you might end up a little disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Decent thriller at the NSA
Review: This book does NOT have the same claims as Brown's "Da Vinci Code" and "Angels and Demons", which claim that the references to art, history, symbology, etc., are all true. But this is a fun and quick book, I started it one evening and was done by the next afternoon. DVC and AD are two VERY similiar stories, and "Digital Fortress" is somewhat similar: the plot consists of a 24 hour period, and includes a dashing academic and a beautiful professional solving a mystery at the NSA, and it involves mysterious murders and international clandestine operations in a tense fast-paced plotline. But "Digital Fortress", as opposed to DVC and AD, is more about the plot and less about the environment. For example, cryptonalysis plays a prominent role in this book, but nearly as much as the symbology and anagrams of DVC or AD. If you're looking for the cryptographic equivalent of Da Vinci Code, this isn't really it. And as someone who grew up in the DC area and knows a bit about the workings of this town, I can say that the details in this book involve some real fiction. (For real insight into the NSA, I would suggest the non-fiction work by James Bamford called "The Puzzle Palace".) And the plot makes some real major leaps and includes a few rather obvious 'mysteries' and plot twists. But it's fast paced and fun nevertheless - for a decent work of fiction with some anagrams and a bit of the US intelligence network, "Digital Fortress" does the trick.
Rating: 
Summary: Digital? Possibly. Fortress? No.
Review: Because I had been fovorably impressed, but not swept over, by Dan Brown's 'The Da Vinci Code', and because I am an amateur, very amateurish cryptography buff, I bought 'Digital Fortress'. One of the positive traits I had found in DVC was, in a general way, the considerable efforts invested by D. Brown in research. Whereas in Digital Fortress, the inaccuracy that borders on flippancy, of most of the cryptographic information displayed in the book cannot be the result of serious research. Of course, this is first and foremost a work of fiction. I do not expect it to be a treatise on cryptography. But an acceptable compromise could have been attained. In my modest opinion, it wasn't. So read it for fun, but just so.
Rating:
Summary: A bit obvious at times ...
Review: I liked most of this book, however the end was really annoying to me. The characters were like "Oh no, what is an element?" ... quite irksome. Dan Brown was very good at making you think one thing happened, and then turning right around again and throwing you off. (which is a good thing)
Rating:
Summary: Predictable plot, factually inaccurate, embarassingly trite
Review: Because I loved his DVC, I read this novel without a critical screening - was I fooled! This book is awful - a total waste of time. Its only merit is it is unintentionally droll! My favorite gaffs: The plot takes obvious turns so often even the characters comment upon the number of coincidences; The matter-of-fact reference to a urinal while in the Ladies washroom; Brown's assumption that readers have no more than his elementary level of computer knowledge; and the colossal stupidity of the NSA characters who are supposed to have IQs of 170!
Rating:
Summary: Unbelievable nonsense
Review: The book is a total nonsense. However, it will be a good source of amusement to anyone with a minimal background in computer science. You can find a plenty of gems to share with your collegues during lunch breaks, or to keep people awake during a boring technical presentation. Some examples: - You cryptographers know nothing about security
- 64 bits are sufficient to store 64 characters
- ZIP is an encryption algorithm
- Transltr does not care about an algorithm once it guesses the key
- a program that DEVELOPED a bug
- million bits long encryption keys
- etc...
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