Rating: 
Summary: Digital Fortress
Review: A gripping thriller .. Becker chasing a mysterious ring through Seville , Spain .. Strathmore , Dep Director , NSA .. super patriotic - always the most dangerous kind !
Ofcourse lovely susan could use some physcops training !!
Rating: 
Summary: FYDFMMFOU
Review: Absolutely brilliant job done here by Dan Brown!! I agree with someone here saying "ppl writing bad reviews didnt actually understand the plot". how very rite.
Well I have my own other reasons for loving this book. It motivated me back into writing crypto algos and network security...
and I am so glad!! :)
thanks Dan!!
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: 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: Soon to be a Movie Script
Review: Compared to his other work, Digital Fortress felt like Mr. Brown was writing this story with a screen play in mind. This was not the level of complexity and character development that readers get from his other works.
Of his non-Angel&Deamons/Da Vinci works, read Deception Point, it is a much better book.
Rating:
Summary: Not your average Brown...
Review: Digital Fortress was Brown's first published novel, and the last one I happened to read. Some very familiar basics immediately popped into mind while reading Digital Fortress, while there were also some crucial things missing.
The similarities are the main characters are supposedly highly intelligent (though naive and sometimes a tad looking into things too much ), there's a bunch of plots-twists, killers on the loose, and some rather nicely done cliffhangers.
The differences are that Brown usually does his research. That completely lacked in this book. I have to agree with earlier reviewers that the number of mistakes made were too numerous to be ignored. The last part completely resembles bit and pieces from the movie 'hackers', where fancy graphical screens replace the dull windows hackers (and system administrators) usually employ.
The plot twists in Digital Fortress were at times predictable, sometimes just plain unbelievable. The professor/fiancee escaped death (and the hands of an experienced assassin) way too easily, and some of the dialogue just made one just groan and cringe when reading it.
Even though it's not Mr. Brown's best work, I still found it an enjoyable read even though I am familiar with the NSA as an organisation, cryptography, programming, etc.
Rating:
Summary: Fun, fun and Fun
Review: I had been steering clear of fiction for a long time. The last fiction I read was Roddy Doyle's "Paddy Clar Ha Ha Ha" - and this was almost 10 years ago! I heard some faint murmurings of a book called the Da Vinci code on the net and from a few friends. Curious to see what it was about, I picked it up. I think I got hooked to Dan Brown books right then and there! I went on to Angel's & Demons. That was very enjoyable to read. After that I had to read Digital Fortress. It is clearly a book in a different genre from the other two. Being a software writer myself, I found the ideas in the book very intriguing. But cryptology and "viruses" apart - the book was just fun. Agreed, some of plot is a little far fetched, some things just happen coincidentially (if you know what I mean:)but Dan Brown has this knack of grabbing your attention and not letting go until the very last page.
As with his previous books, dialogs and character development don't seem to be Dan Brown's forte (I am only comparing him to great writers like Frederick Forsythe & Jeffrey Archer), but he is a very smart writer. He mixes and stirs fiction, history, science, and different sub-plots in a giant cauldron, and he does it so adroitly that the result is a potent edge-of-the-seat read!
Over all - a great book - probably not a classic, but still a very enjoyanble read.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent and Engaging Techno-Thriller
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I have not yet gotten around to reading The Da Vinci Code, also from Dan Brown- I do own it, I just haven't gotten around to reading it yet. Digital Fortress however piqued my interest because it related directly to computer and network security. Brown certainly does his homework as it relates to computer security technology and talks intelligently about encryption algorithms. The crux of this story revolves around a new encryption algorithm which, even with a relatively small key, is completely unbreakable. I found the book fast-paced and engaging. I almost literally didn't put it down until I was done. I don't take many forays into the world of fiction, but if you like cyber-thrillers I highly recommend you pick this book up and read it.
Tony Bradley is a consultant and writer with a focus on network security, antivirus and incident response. He is the About.com Guide for Internet / Network Security (http://netsecurity.about.com), providing a broad range of information security tips, advice, reviews and information. Tony also contributes frequently to other industry publications. For a complete list of his freelance contributions you can visit Essential Computer Security (http://www.tonybradley.com).
Rating:
Summary: Confusing Satisfation
Review: I was very bored the first couple of chapters, but as the book progressed, I couldn't put it down. A lot of the terms used were very confusing and sometimes I would skip over sentences, but you could understand the jist of what the author was trying to say. I found myself trying to play detective and figure it out, but when it was all said and done, I really had no idea "whodunnit" I would highly recommend this book if you are looking for a great afternoon reading.
Rating:
Summary: A couple of flaws mar an otherwise very suspensful novel
Review: If the NSA has a guardian to prevent malicious code from getting into their vaunted multiprocessing code breaking computer, wouldn't they also have guardian block whatever might get out to other NSA systems? Especially, if a manager can bypass the guardian and allow the code to get in! Wouldn't this be a safeguard needed on a computer system that cost billions of dollars to build? This is one example of minor things that nagged at me after reading this novel.
That being said, while I was reading "Digital Fortress", I didn't take the time to ponder these questions because I was on a wonderful roller coaster ride of a story. The reader will find it very, very hard to put down this novel. I read "Digital Fortress" in one evening, finally going to bed at 2am.
Some of the characters needed to be fleshed out in this novel. Like the Langdon novels, Susan Fletcher, Dave Becker and the NSA Crypto team need to be revisited in future novels. And, the author needs to drop the mysterious assassin with one name that appear frequently in his novels (Hulahot in "Digital Fortress", Hassassin in "Angels & Demons" and Silas in "The Da Vinci Code") -- it's been repeated too much.
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