Rating: 
Summary: Worst I've Read in a Long Time
Review: This is only my opinion, but I have trouble calling this a thriller. It certainly is no longer cutting edge (published in 1998), but that's not the author's fault. The rest of it is. For the first 200 pages, the action moves forward with all the speed of a dead horse. You aren't sure what the point is, and you don't care. What the action lacks in thrills, it makes up for in melodrama. There was one endless scene where the pretty heroine-crytographer is pulled back and forth between two men that is reminiscent of that old silent serial (Perils of Pauline? for you movie history buffs). The dialogue is ghastly and the description is nonsensical. His jet black eyes were like coal? She was conservatively dressed in plaid pants? What was the author thinking? There is a whole lot of disgusting stuff we don't need to know, like a detailed description of the hero's several visits to a filthy public restroom. Finally, if a character is speaking a language other than English, the author should be sure to get it right. I can't tell you about the Spanish, but the German was pretty bad. I'm not paying full price for the DaVinci Code after this.
Rating:
Summary: boring boring boring
Review: You got some characters, you got some plot threads, but every thread is slow, dull and predictable. This is just not clever writing. Futhermore, the author clearly doesn't know anything technical, not about computers, not about cryptography. It shows ultimately, when a writer is just manipulating words as meaningless symbols.
Rating: 
Summary: Astonishing-- a thriller about cryptanalysis!
Review: As a longtime student of cryptanalysis I have always felt that the solving of codes and ciphers was fascinating, but I never expected to see it as the central element in a thriller so fast-paced and "unputdownable" that I literally found myself losing sleep to keep reading it. Dan Brown is a master storyteller, there's no doubt about it. It's no small trick to take something as intricate as cryptology and transform it into a page-turning delight, but Brown has done precisely that. Whatever your politics, whatever you think about organizations like the NSA, you're bound to get caught up in this splendid novel as soon as you pick it up.
Rating:
Summary: Waist of time
Review: The worst part about this book is not that it is really predicitble but that it totally doesn't make sense. REALLY MR. BROWN STOP PATRONIZING US !!!! I think this author is one of the most overrated authors of all times!!!.
Rating:
Summary: Good Research, bad romance
Review: I found this book to be well researched, but it was like decorating an abandoned house with fine artwork. Every turn of the page had this combination of exquisite details hanging on the story structure of a harliquin romace. The heroine is supposed to be smart, strong, and beautiful - and yet she is also weak willed, sits at her computer for hours mooning over her boyfriend. She is the leader of a think tank, but cant effectively handle male sexual harrassment with anything other than ineffectual bad humor. She whines, she ignores the obvious clues to problems, and gets pulled along on an adventure that hinges on the very intellegence of her oh-so-convienently intellegent in just the right way handsome boyfriend. Mr. Brown is so focused on her beauty, in fact, that he includes erronious details that have no effect on showing her as an intellegent being at all. He describes her dress, for example: her shirt is white and see through. She wears high heals in one chapter for emphasis on the look of her legs, and suddenly flats when its convienent for her to run. When she is attacked, its not as a threat to her life, but implies a rape waitng to happen aka: skirt bunched up arround her hips, or the wet t-shirt contest he forces upon her by the steam in the belly of the about to explode machine. He forces you to look at her as a sexualized creature, only incidentally indicating she is intellegent, but never actually allowing you to SEE this supposed intellegence. She is a facade. Mr. Browns work research is extremely well done, but I came to his works to read a story, not a harlequin romance. If he intends to write more stories about 'strong' heroines, he needs to learn more about how women, and relationships, work before hanging such a masterpiece of research on such a shoddy structure of a storyline. I do not reccomend reading this.
Rating: 
Summary: A good read.
Review: I found this book very hard to put down. I didn't emerse myself in the technical details, was purely reading for pleasure and found this a very pleasureable read.
Rating:
Summary: More lame fiction from Dan Brown
Review: Some books and authors get a "buzz" and sell a lot. Sometimes this is because the book is good (Hillenbrand's "Seabiscuit" or Sebold's "The Lovely Bones" for example), but quite often the book in question just stinks - yet the "buzz" and sales go on. Dan Brown for sure is in this latter category - I have read all 4 of his novels (to date) and they all have HUGE flaws and HUGE plot holes and HUGE gaps of logic. There ARE elements in his stories that are good and the ideas could be turned into a good story, but I am afraid Dan Brown is not up to the task. Where is his editor? Doesn't anyone read these books before they are printed? I guess not. If you think "The DaVinci Code" is REAL, then you will likely enjoy this book. If you smart enough, then stay far, far away.
Rating:
Summary: A Total Waste Of Your Tme
Review: I liked the DVC and even better A&D so I bought this one. Don't make the same mistake. One of the worse books I've ever read. Poor character and plot development. Not a thriller--almost every development was unbelievable and worse uninteresting. . I could continue but I think by now you must have gotten my point!
Rating:
Summary: Better, Dan. Much better.
Review: There are a lot of people critiquing this book, and being pretty rough on it, if you ask me. (And I can assure you that if you're reading this, you're asking me. So don't say, "Well no one asked you.") Though the writing is still a bit choppy like Brown's other books, The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons, I think the quality of his writing is a lot more in depth in this one. The characters are more developed, including the secondary characters like "Hale" and "Midge," and the code in the end makes up for the slow beginning, especially if you're able to figure it out.
Rating:
Summary: If you've ever used a computer read something else
Review: Let me first say that I like the techno thriller genre, unfortunatly this is among the worst techno thrillers I've ever read. It is fairly obvious that mr. Brown knows little if anything of computers and most likely writes his books using pen and paper. Nothing he writes rings true, especially regarding computer security, and he also impresses with his ability to get most of his computer-jargon wrong. If you are even a little computer literate you will unfortunatly laugh in all the wrong places reading this book. The book is also rather impressive in that it advertises all its major plot points in mile-high neon signs. The so called plot twists will suprise noone.
Most of all I find myself wondering if mr Brown was trying to write the book as a bad movie script, a movie staring Jean-Claude van Damme and shown only on late-night TV when noone is watching. The movie would probably have charachters that werent as one-dimensional though.
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