Product Description
Digital Fortress is the best and most realistic techno-thriller to reach the market in years. Dan Brown's ability to paint in living color the gray area between personal freedom vs. National security is awesome. The story line is so good, readers will feel a chilling thrill a minute as the book makes one think who is truly the terrorist and who is actually freedom's guardian.
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Amazon.com Review
In most thrillers, "hardware" consists of big guns, airplanes, military vehicles, and weapons that make things explode. Dan Brown has written a thriller for those of us who like our hardware with disc drives and who rate our heroes by big brainpower rather than big firepower. It's an Internet user's spy novel where the good guys and bad guys struggle over secrets somewhat more intellectual than just where the secret formula is hidden--they have to gain understanding of what the secret formula actually is. In this case, the secret formula is a new means of encryption, capable of changing the balance of international power. Part of the fun is that the book takes the reader along into an understanding of encryption technologies. You'll find yourself better understanding the political battles over such real-life technologies as the Clipper Chip and PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) software even though the book looks at the issues through the eyes of fiction. Although there's enough globehopping in this book for James Bond, the real battleground is cyberspace, because that's where the "bomb" (or rather, the new encryption algorithm) will explode. Yes, there are a few flaws in the plot if you look too closely, but the cleverness and the sheer fun of it all more than make up for them. There are enough twists and turns to keep you guessing and a lot of high, gee-whiz-level information about encryption, code breaking, and the role they play in international politics. Set aside the whole afternoon and evening for it and have finger food on hand for supper--you may want to read this one straight through.
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 Worse than lame
Having read Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons, and Digital Fortress I can only say he spins a good story if you can get past the nonsense. This one was the hardest to get through and the absolute worst of those 3 (not that the other 2 are stellar either). The plot is predictable and the characters are stupid (even though they hold degrees I can only dream of). Others far more knowledgeable than I can tell you how bad the technical stuff was, my limited knowledge just made it bad enough to wish he'd done just a little research to make it sound a bit more plausible. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, not even an enemy.
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 Well-researched novel ( tylur_durden )
In the beginning, a Portuguese man kills a Japanese cryptographer. After this introduction scene, the action moves to the protagonist who is an American woman, Susan Fletcher. Her lover, David Becker, could be considered the most important male character in the book. Other characters include the head of NSA who is a black man, a common occurrence in many books nowadays as the world anticipates a black leader for the USA. The characters in this book we think are good are evil, and those we think are evil are good. In this space are characters such as Trevor Strathmore and Greg Hale.
The whole book is a long chase for Becker as he goes around Spain trying to find a ring which the dying Japanese cryptographer gave to the people around him. Once, Becker goes to a hospital thinking that an old patient in it has the ring, but in a surprising twist, the old man doesn't. Unlike Becker, Susan Fletcher spends most of her time in the book located in one building, the Cryptodome. While in the building, she finds out that the dying Japanese cryptographer had no North American accomplice, as the book previously implies. As the book is set in 1998, it gets most of its history about the Internet right (such as the dominance of the Netscape browser or the appearance of a new type of bad software, the worm).
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 Another great book by Dan Brown ( doreenstokes4 )
I'll make this review short. I loved it. Couldn't put it down. Another excellent book by Dan Brown! I liked the fast action between chapters.
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Good airplane book ( wiredweird )
Just skip over everything that sounds like science or cryptography. That part's kind of a mess. The excitement and tension are great, though.
Brown's fascination with hidden cabals of immense power matches the NSA - "No Such Agency" - directly. Just enough about it is public that it can stir a very modern nervousness, that looking-over-the-shoulder feeling given pit-of-the-stomach reality by the daily news. Still, enough about the NSA remains curtained that Brown can project onto it any image he wants. And as a master craftsman of the written word, he does.
The plot was all I hoped for on that lengthy plane ride, the only time I read stuff like this. It features hot babes, brilliant strategists, vicious killers, and an international search for the missing key. Fast cuts between subplots let each progress to a cliffhanger moment, then switch back to the other emerging forces. The countdown at the end has plenty of James Bond drama, as do the sudden reversals of who the good guy seems to be. Then the good guys and bad guys are properly sorted out in the end.
-- wiredweird
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I really really liked it! ( kotto75 )
I can't imagine why there are so many bad reviews of this book. The writing IMO was good, the dialogue and story were great! It was a definite thriller for me, it had good plot twists, and had a good suspenseful War Games type of ending. What more could you ask for?
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