Digital Fortress : A Thriller

Rating:
Summary: One of THE Best Books of the Year!!!
Review: From the first page of this thriller Dan Brown grips the reader in a never ending hold of intrigue and suspense. I started getting angry at Mr. Brown because everytime I wanted to stop reading a little voice inside of me said "Stop?! Are you crazy? Keep going!" I sped through this book whose characters are every bit as entertaining as the actual plot line and whose twists and turns were more frequent and scary than a drive through the Ozark mountains. This was a Great book and I honestly cannot wait until his next effort.

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Summary: FANTABULOUS TECHNO-THRILLER!!!! READ IT IN 2 SITTINGS!
Review: full disclosure: dan contacted my after reading one of my reviews and asked me to read his book. i doubt that i would've picked it up as i'm quite the computer illiterate but this book didn't make me feel stupid...quite the contrary..it really opened my eyes to things that i had only just suspected....how much of this stuff was real and how much was pure imagination or how much of this will be true in just a matter of years....what a literary romp!!! thoroughly enjoyed each character especially susan and her ferragamos and david's 'without wax'....hopefully we'll see more of them in future books....keep writing, dan....and fast!!!!! thanx for such a exciting and different thriller!!!

Rating:
Summary: This is a fun read
Review: Look, it's not Thomas Pynchon. But Pynchon isn't a fast-paced, suspenseful, "oh-I'll-just-read-one-more-delicious-bite-sized chapter" kind of read. You buy the book. You inhale it. You get a pleasant high.

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Summary: Digital terror!
Review: A breakneck cyber-thriller with dozens of interesting twists that kept me turning the pages. Many thrillers bog down but Dan Brown managed to keep the excitement coming right up until the final moments and I found myself feeling for the colorful characters, nearly all of whom were "just trying to do their job" -- as they saw it. Big flaw, though. Many previous reviewers kept saying how "real" this book seems, but as an ordinary reader who uses e-mail and cruises the Web, I don't have any way to tell how well researched his fantastic TRANSLTR is, or how actually a governmental agency would even find all the e-mail messages supposedly sent by drug lords and terrorists, especially since you can switch anonymous mail providers at the drop of a hat. Therefore, although it was all very exciting, parts of the story reminded me of a cartoon movie. Like the computer in the assassin's wire-rimmed.eye-glasses... for which he uses metal devices on his fingers to enter data... is that existing technology? Can a computer screen be rigged to show virtual images of "armies of hackers" trying to break into a system? Cartoons never explain, they just have fantastic stuff... Next time, the author should be sure to append some sort of history or other details that would tie down his "fantastic effects" to existing reality, and let the reader know if he/she is in "could be possible" land or "really happening" terroritory. One more gripe, this one in the author's behalf. Dan Brown is still a newbie and can't protest, so they buried his name on the front cover in the midst of a bunch of cyber letters so it's barely visible to a possible book reader prowling the bookstore shelf. I didn't even notice it at first. Whoa. Take note, publishers... don't bury the name of a man like Dan Brown. As he gets better known, his name will get bigger and bigger, and the title of the book will get smaller and smaller... Good luck, Dan.

Rating:
Summary: thriller all the way
Review: I'm sure you've read the words," couldn't put it down." Well, move over Ludlum, Demille, Clancy and Follett, Dan Brown has arrived. As an avid reader Ijudge the merits of a good novel as how the author keeps me turning the pages. Mr.Brown does accomplish this with ease. One of the best thrillers that i've read in a long time. The dialogue is as good as Demilles, the plot as thrilling as Ludlum and written with the ease of Follett. I've already checked with Amazon to make sure they inform me as soon as Dan Brown's next novel is published.

Rating:
Summary: First rate cyber-thriller.
Review: I don't often read novels, but in this instance I was captivated by the book's synopsis and, boy, am I glad I bought it. A riveting storyline, with a masterful portrayal of the world of computer security.

Rating:
Summary: Here's to a better job next time
Review: Neither "techno" nor "thriller", Dan Brown's "Digital Fortress" is only a fair impersonation of a Robert Ludlum novel and is equally as bad as Payne Harrison's "The Black Cipher". You will learn essentially nothing about cryptology nor the NSA in reading "Digital Fortress" that you couldn't learn yourself in 6th grade primers on codes and ciphers. For better written thrillers that use cryptology as a backdrop, see Pearson's "Simple Simon" (soon to be released as a movie, "Mercury Rising") or Harris' "Enigma". For cryptology itself, look for David Kahn's recently revised "Codebreakers" (non-fiction), "The Puzzle Palace" (non-fiction about the NSA) and several good articles in "Wired" Magazine over the past two years concerning cryptology. Dan Brown can obviously write well; we can only hope for a better researched, more engaging work next time.

Rating:
Summary: Ridiculous - Another forgetfable throwaway "thriller" b
Review: Sometimes I pick up an obscure book and try to give the author a try. But, try as I might, I could not find much that interested me in this forgettable book. Once I bought it I thought I would give it the review it deserved (a bad one). When I saw the tons of "reader comments" I almost laughed. I find if hard to believe that an obscure first novelist - where I just happened to find his last book in the store (and not because it has been selling like hotcakes, they only had two) - has so many "rave reviews" online. More, in fact, than the new John Grisham book (which was equally as horrible). So please, friends of Dan Brown (or the author himself). Please do not insult our intelligence by these false reviews and fade into obscurity like what will inevitably happen with a novel this predictable, technological incorrect and implausible with boring, undeveloped characters. DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY! - DB

Rating:
Summary: Excellent first novel!
Review: Great start to a career as a novelist. This was a book that I couldn't put down. Not only is the subject of the plot scary and kind of nerve - rattling, but the story that Brown weaves around his main premise is quite believable. I was a bit taken aback with some of the typos and grammatical problems. The editor and typesetter should be more careful even though this is a first edition. I did find some areas quite predictable. I don't know if the author meant this or I just twigged onto this, but it didn't detract from the book itself. All in all, an excellent first novel!

Rating:
Summary: An excellent techno-thriller
Review: I tire of seeing reviews which praise a book as being a "wonderful debut" or a "very good first novel". It doesn't matter to me what number an entry in an author's overall work a novel is...what matters to me is whether or not it fills the bill. Dan Brown's Digital Fortress does that in spades. From the moment one of the main characters, Ensei Tankado, dies in Seville on page one Dan is in charge of a masterful plot. "Wait a minute," you're saying." "One of the main characters dies on page one? This must be some kind of Sunset Boulevard flash-back kind of thing." Not at all. Tankado becomes a major player through the mechanisms he leaves behind him to confuse the NSA, a super-secretive US government agency. Enter the Commander, NSA's chief operative officer, Susan Fletcher, its top cryptographer and her fiance, David Becker, a teacher of languages. Throw in a deaf assassin in Seville, some very suspect NSA employees, and you have a quick-paced story of high intrigue. It's a techo-thriller that doesn't beat you to death with details the way Clancy does, but teaches you all the same. I forgive the revolver with a silencer (doesn't work) and the multibillion government agency without emergency backup lighting (or at least a flashlight, for God's sake) in deference to the riveting story that kept me enthralled. I am in charge of the mystery/thriller section for the largest Borders Books in Dallas, and I'm making this a staff recommendation for this month. And believe me, I do not take lightly the responsibility of what I tell my regular customers they should read. Good work, Dan!! I'm looking forward to many more. Just keep the silencers off the revolvers...and lighten up (lights, get it?) Don't miss it folks.