2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
STORM - great cyber-thriller!, July 31, 2010
This review is from: Storm (Paperback)
The tale in Storm really is a very modern - almost mind-blowing - intriguing, intelligent and compelling story, quite tech-savvy but with several interesting human touches as well. In the beginning we meet up with a young kid, Dutch, already a full-blown, highly skilled hacker, and his similarly talented cyber-friends. The friends are Spyder, Ray, Skye and Skreemer. They call themselves STORM, and only Dutch and Spyder of the five hackers in the group know one another the old-fashioned, physical way. The others have met over safe phone lines and in cyberspace, and they only know one another by their call names. While they are in the process of finally - after many futile attempts - hacking into a top secret site, one of the guys is arrested (while phreaking, i.e. manipulating telephone networks) and the group splits up.
After having stayed away from hacking for twenty years and been out of touch with the other members of the group, Dutch is suddenly, out of nowhere, contacted by one of the guys from STORM. He needs Dutch for a new hack the group has been planning for a long time. It is the final challenge, the ultimate hack - they want to break in to an ultra top secret military facility, heavily encrypted and protected by impenetrable firewalls. Dutch can't resist this intriguing challenge, and soon he is on his way to Compound Five, the most heavily protected facility of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), to attack the Intelink. It turns out to be a hack different from anything Dutch anticipated, and so much more - it will take everything Dutch has to make it out alive.
Storm is hot! It's a wonderful high-adrenaline action-packed roller-coaster of a thriller, as intense and engaging in some ways as the Millennium trilogy by Stieg Larsson and my favorite Dan Brown novel, Digital Fortress. The plot really rocks, and I found the technology and hacking to be fascinating to the extreme. This really is a fabulous read, an excellent cyber-thriller, and I have to admit that I can't wait for the next book in this series.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very good cyber-thriller, especially given that this is his first novel..., July 24, 2010
This review is from: Storm (Paperback)
Fair warning... I really like cyber-thrillers, especially with a liberal dose of hacking thrown in. To that end, I had no problems saying yes to reviewing Storm by Dave Pearson. For a first novel, Pearson did quite well. He throws together a virtual band of hackers who come together to hack the biggest prize of all, the Intelink high-security top-secret intranet run by the US government. But to do so, they need to slip into a heavily guarded compound on a isolated island during the middle of a war games training exercise and gain access to the computers there. Once inside, they can assemble and insert a state-of-the-art virus to gather the data they want and can sell to the highest bidder.
It might be a bit too much to expect that a team of stereotypical hackers could operate as a combat commando unit. But Pearson puts down a back story (and reveals more towards the end) that makes it all imaginable in terms of a cyber-thriller plot. There are also a number of plot twists and turns as the story unfolds, making it a page-turner... "just one more chapter, then I'll turn out the light..." And since he positions this as the first of a series, I'm looking forward to the next installment.
Storm is that book that would work great as a beach or vacation read... just sit back and go for a wild ride.
Disclosure:
Obtained From: Publisher
Payment: Free
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Thumbs Up, July 17, 2010
This review is from: Storm (Paperback)
Awesome. This book kept me up several nights in a row because I couldn't put it down until I finished it. I was a little skeptical at first as this is not a genre I know anything about (I'm generally a Jane Austen kind of person), but I was hooked by the end of the first chapter. I'm not sure how many cyber-thrillers are in my future, but I will definitely read Pearson's next book (here's to hoping there's a sequel....).
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
