Digital Fortress

Beautiful NSA cryptographer and her boyfriend save the NSA's classified data from a fate worse than deletion. Mostly, I wanted to smack the main characters upside the head and get to the end of the book.

The author, Dan Brown, also wrote The Da Vinci Code, which I found entertaining for the historical references. Mr. Brown's rollercoaster ride narrative style seems to be his trademark, but the ride is a little rough in Digital Fortress, his first thriller.

The mass-market paperback edition was published by St. Martin's Paperbacks.

A couple different storylines running in parallel which the author likes to do cliff hangers of when switching from one to the other. And the last quarter of the book is unusual in the fact the who dunnit is answered and then the storyline continues for quite some time with the nail biting resolution rather than a quick wrap up of any loose ends. I liked this book.

Thanks to this early work of Dan Brown, I now wonder if [b:Angels and Demons 960 Angels and Demons (Robert Langdon, #1) Dan Brown http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1303390735s/960.jpg 3338963] and [b:The Da Vinci Code 968 The Da Vinci Code (Robert Langdon, #2) Dan Brown http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1303252999s/968.jpg 2982101] were also poorly researched. I hope not, since I rather enjoyed them. Given that this book deals with a domain I'm familiar with, and reading some of the other 5-star reviews, I'm beginning to think the other books probably had lots of factual errors and inaccuracies.The premise was rather interesting - an unbreakable code - too bad it was carried along by a lack of research and unrealistic characters. Couldn't empathise at all - a handsome school teacher who turned out to be incredibly resourceful (and incredibly stupid at times) plus a sexy and beautiful IQ 170 crytographer who didn't really act like she had that much IQ.The poor research wasn't limited to cryptography and computer programming (can't be bothered to list them individually); it was eyeball-rolling if you know what Kanji is, and just how silly it was to use the term “Asian dialect”. The attempt at “techie-speak” during the finale was literally cringing. It was a struggle to finish the finale. Well, not just that - the finale itself was pretty bad - too drawn out. That vis-rep thing? I shake my head.Anyway, I don't recommend this book at all. If you like Angels & Demons or the Da Vinci Code, stick with those. If you didn't like those two, don't even bother with this.

Exactly what I wanted from this book - a fast-reading, cinematic, campy, dorky technothriller from the 90s.

It's a bit long, but still my favorite thing I've read from Dan Brown.

The enlightened reader would like character motivations that make sense and clear character development but get outta here with that. I want a fake-smart popcorn-flick and this thing DELIVERS. Where's the movie?

When the perfect woman meets the perfect man, I was torn between putting it down, or throwing it in the nearest bin! Perfect woman (who every man is in love with of course) has an IQ of 170, is the world's leading genius in the code-breaking field, yet somehow manages to do not a lot in this book. She teaches her perfect boyfriend basic code-breaking and he turns out to be better at it than she is! Perfect boyfriend, who is a mere language genius, then turns out to be stupid enough to accept an undercover mission without so much as a slight raised eyebrow and turns into James Bond, engaging in every chase/pursuit cliché in history!

It has many short chapters. Yet, it is difficult to stop reading. It has a clever hi-tech theme. It does get quite technical with the world of codes, cryptography, hackers, computers and intelligence, I don't have any knowledge of those and I managed to understand it.

I found this book at my local charity shop, and am very glad I did not pay full price for this.

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Quiet different from the usual style adopted by Dan brown. Here we are presented with a story that has nothing to do any ancient documents,puzzles or doomsday prophecys that we are quiet familiar with in his novel..which also means one thing ..the main character is not our usual well known quick witted professor Langdon.