Digital Fortress [Paperback]

DAN BROWN (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 431 pages
• Publisher: New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998.; 1st edition (1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312263120
• ISBN-13: 978-0312263126
• ASIN: B000I3L2I8
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.1 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1,029 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,401,955 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Dan Brown is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Da Vinci Code and, previously, Digital Fortress, Deception Point, and Angels and Demons. He is a graduate of Amherst College and Phillips Exeter Academy, where he spent time as an English teacher before turning his efforts fully to writing. He lives in New England with his wife.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

68 of 72 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not good - read Cryptonomicon instead, December 30, 2004

By 

Pete (Charlotte, NC USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Digital Fortress: A Thriller (Paperback)

First off, I loved A & D and liked DVC. Second, I am a computer programmer with experience in cryptography. So this book really hurt me.

This book is painful to read. Most of the facts, much of which are crucial to the plot, are just flat out wrong. Dan Brown does not know very much about computers, cryptography, guns, or intelligence work, and it shows. His research was pathetic. This alone will turn off many technically-savvy folks.

Aside from that, the plot, while containing a few surprises, has very predictable twists, and any intelligent person could chart out the whole plot after about 30 pages. Even still, the pacing makes for interest, until the end. The climax was one of the worst I have ever read in any techno-thriller novel, and that is saying a lot considering how crowded this field became after Tom Clancy made it big. At best, only a cheesy early 80s movie would try to bring the final scene to celluloid (think "Wargames", but dumber). It's like a comic book.

If the gentle reader of this review is really interested in a good techno-thriller involving computers and cryptography, read "Cryptonomicon" by Neal Stephenson. He is a real live programmer and cryptographer, and also a fine writer.

124 of 149 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Painful like an icicle jabbed thru the eye & into the brain, November 11, 2004

By 

Rimesh Patel (Washington D.C.) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Digital Fortress: A Thriller (Mass Market Paperback)

Wow, where to begin. This is the second Dan Brown book I've read and I'm guessing it'll likely be the last. To begin, if you plan on reading this book, forget suspending your disbelief, rather tie up your disbelief, take it out back and shoot it lest it resurface while you're reading the book.

Yes, this book contains an impressive amount of plot holes, factual errors, non-existent technology, etc. The NSA (which is in fact bigger than the CIA and the FBI) is portrayed as an organization with no more than perhaps 20 employees, none of whom come in on weekends. Employees with 170 IQs who act as if they had a 70 IQ. 12 gauge printer cable? The NSA has full-time employees that work as translators -- they don't hire temp college professors to read Chinese/Japanese. Programmers/mathematicians DO NOT MAKE an exorbitant amount of money working for the NSA -- they are still subject to the federal payscale. X-eleven, not 'X11'? Brute force code-breaking as the primary decryption method????? VSLI, not VLSI??? Tracer programs which don't have to be executed, but act on their own? Ugh.

I can overlook these things if they appeared in a well written, taut storyline. In his defense, Dan Brown doesn't include a preface to this book espousing the accuracy of the books' general facts as he does in the prefaces for Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code. So you have to take it as FICTION and not non-fiction. He does claim to have corresponded with former NSA employees during his research for this book. Having a bit of experience in the industry, I would say that either Dan Brown had no such correspondences with former NSA employees, they fed him misinformation deliberately, or Dan Brown was informed the basis of his entire book was nonsensical by these former employees, so he decided to throw all their suggestions in the trash and continued to write this book anyhow.

Regardless, the ultimate downfall of this book is BAD WRITING. The characters are flat and annoying. Their actions are contradictory to their personalities -- for no other purpose than to move the 'plot' along. I think Dan Brown has a Word-a-Day calendar and he uses that new vocabulary word several times in the 10-15 pages of writing he produces that day. Words such as 'andalusian' are used several times in a 3 'chapter' span and then never again surface throughout the book.

Most frustratingly, Dan Brown apparently never learned similes are functional and get the point across, but should not be used often as they can be extremely annoying and counterproductive to getting a point across. Towards the end of the book all these sentences are seriously used in less than 2 full pages:
- "The commander rose through the trap door LIKE Lazarus back from the dead."
- "Freon was flowing downward through the smoldering TRANSLTR LIKE oxygenated blood."
- "Susan was standing before him, damp and tousled, in his blazer. She looked LIKE a freshman coed who'd been caught in the rain. He felt LIKE the senior who'd lent her his varsity sweater." [nice double simile, huh?]
- "Her gaze was LIKE ice -- the softness was gone. Susan Fletcher stood rigid LIKE an immovable statue." [another one] "The puddle of blood beneath Hale's body had spread across the carpet LIKE an oil spill."

Believe it or not, there are more in this 2 page space, but I'll stop here. Yes, the writing is THAT groan-inducingly bad. These two classics in the book make me laugh every time I think of them -- "Like in a cheap hollywood movie, the lights went out in the bathroom just as she heard the scream," and "any more interesting than last night and I'll never walk again."

Ultimately, I did finish the book -- one reason I gave it 2 stars instead of one. A small reason was because I hate leaving a book half read, but I finished it more so to see how much more ludicrous the book would become. There's a good premise in the book, but a better writer was needed to coax it out. Dan Brown is not that writer.

361 of 450 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A Total Waste Of Time!!, November 20, 2003

By 

Jana L. Perskie "ceruleana" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Digital Fortress: A Thriller (Paperback)

I doubt this will be a popular review, but I feel obliged to tell it like I see it...or read it, in this case - and "Digital Fortress" is a waste of time! I have now read all of Dan Brown's books and am a big fan. Brown tackles unusual subjects, conducts impeccable research on his topics and writes fabulous suspense thrillers, with the exception of this one. His characters are cardboard, totally without depth. The plot could have been believable but it is not written in a credible or logical manner. The action is chaotic - and there is too much action and too little substance here.

The National Security Agency, (NSA), has a top secret, totally invincible code-breaking machine called TRANSLTR, especially effective against advanced electronic terrorism. A disgruntled ex-NSA employee, Ensei Tankado, is a genius computer programmer and author of encryption algorithms. He has written a program that creates unbreakable codes and is using this program to blackmail NSA. Tankado wants a public disclosure of TRANSLTR. This multibillion dollar wonder machine that supports the CIA, FBI, DEA, IRS, etc., and traces & monitors drug cartel shipments, corporate money transfers and terrorists chatter on the Internet, also grossly violates human rights. It is able to open and read everyone's email and reseal it without public knowledge. The US government has the capability, with TRANSLTR, of violating the privacy of computer users around the world. And Tankado is sworn to protect the peoples' right to privacy. Sounds like a terrific plot, right? That's why I bought the book.

Enter Susan Fletcher, the beautiful, talented, brilliant NSA cryptologist and mathematician who steps in to investigate the unbreakable code that threatens to render TRANSLTR useless. What she uncovers should be shocking and terrifying, but it isn't. It's blatantly unbelievable. The theory is realistic, but the people who take action, and their different rationales, are totally ludicrous. How could people like this be in charge of national security? I could understand a bad apple, or even two - but there are just too many wackos populating this novel, and all with mega-responsibility. It would be horrifying if there were a secret code that would cripple US intelligence systems. But Brown tampered too much with a potentially great plot. He has Susan's boss, Commander Strathmore, deputy director of NSA's CRYPTO facility, send Susan's fiance to Spain on a Top Secret errand...and the fiance doesn't even work for NSA! He's a foreign language professor! Apparently Strathmore has his own agenda, which is ridiculous and totally weakens the storyline. There is unnecessary globetrotting, too many needless murders, silly dialogue, uncalled for disasters, etc., etc. If Dan Brown were not the author, I would have closed the book before the halfway mark. I kept waiting for the author to make some sense out of all the malarkey.

There is so much potential here for a super suspense techno-thriller. And the issue of where to draw the line between national security and personal freedom is a wonderful one to explore. Unfortunately the novel contains too many special effects, unbelievable subplots and flat characters...and all the above mentioned needless action. The fascinating information about real life technologies, cryptography and the battle for privacy in cyberspace is lost in the mega-murders and catastrophes that plague this novel. If you are intrigued by the subject matter, then by all means read the book, and you may even enjoy it. It seems that other reviewers have. I don't often award 1 Star, but I really believe that that's all this novel deserves. I find Dan Brown's other books to be excellent - across the board.
JANA