Rating: 
Summary: Digital Fortress
Review: I truly enjoyed the da Vinci Code by Dan Brown and thought Digital Fortress would be as good. I was disappointed, however, because of the lack of character development. The main characters seemed remarkably similar to those in da Vinci Code without the same depth. The plot is good, but not a page turner. Lastly, the "villians" were "lack luster." It seems that Brown used more foul language and seediness to make up for real content and excitement. I was so disappointed I didn't even finish the book.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Book
Review: Great book - Ignore the reviews from the folks who spend more time analyzing the minutia of the book than actually reading it and enjoying it. It's a good book to read and enjoy, finished it in 24 hours.
Rating: 
Summary: A page turner, but not up to par
Review: Unfortunately for "Digital Fortress", I heard about Dan Brown from his two most recent blockbusters, "Angels & Demons" and "Da Vinci Code", and thus I read those two before I picked up "Digital Fortress". I believe if I had read his older work first, I would have been more happy with it, and even more excited when I saw the growth into his most recent works.The story was entertaining, and dabbled in topics with which I am familiar (security and privacy). This made me tear through it, but it required some major suspension of disbelief on my part. His liberal use of invented computer science, along with five-year-old technologies and ideas was less than satisfying to someone in the CS field. However, there are many books that I have thoroughly enjoyed that I have no technical knowledge about yet have been fascinated by. Similarly, I believe that someone NOT firmly grounded in bits and bytes will enjoy this book for its fast paced story. The technical aspects aside, this book is still not up to par with Brown's more recent books. His thoughts aren't as well expressed, and some of the sentences and paragraphs are just...tacky. However, Brown's famous 2 page chapters lend themselves well to being read one after the other after the other, and before you know it, you are closing the book. The plot and twists are well planned as usual. Brown is excellent at switching back and forth between three or four characters in their own mini stories without losing the reader in any of the intermingling details. Regardless that I thought I had Brown nailed on some detail every now and then, each is wrapped up nicely by the end of the story. A good deal of hand-holding is done in the final few minutes of the excitement, a slight misjudgment in my opinion: Brown should have given his reader's sleuthing a little more credit at the finale. A fun read, but don't expect great things.
Rating:
Summary: Two and a Half Stars
Review: Not nearly as good as The Da Vinci Code or Angels and Demons. It is very predictable and full of stock characters. It's not terrible and you could certaintly do worse, but a disappointment after reading The Da Vinci Code.
Rating:
Summary: Factual, Fast, and Fun
Review: I was introduced to Dan Brown's books only a few weeks ago, but have quickly absorbed all of his published works. It is easy to see why some are comparing his Da Vinci Code to the novel Conquest of Paradise. Both books deal masterfully with the more mysterious features of religion, politics, and science. And both bring to light amazing bits of information, which are weaved into the intricate patterns of an overall compelling story. While Brown compresses labyrinthine plots into brief time periods to provide page-turning suspense, Conquest of Paradise is of epic proportion, covering the entire world. Of the Dan Brown books I've read so far, Digital Fortress is the second best I've read so far behind The Da Vinci Code. Dan Brown truly has a talent for creating interesting, suspenseful prose.
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.
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