My book group chose this book and I will never forgive them.I’ve never read anything by Dan Brown. He doesn’t write my type of fiction, so while I was aware that he’s a huge success, I never bothered to pick any of his books up because I knew I wouldn’t be interested.What I didn’t know is how much of a shit writer he is.I’m sure he cries into a giant pile of money every single time someone tells him that.Digital Fortress is about the government and secrecy. Susan Fletcher works for a super top secret government agency called NSA that cracks codes to read emails and save the world. How do I remember that her name is Susan Fletcher? Susan Fletcher is referred to as Susan Fletcher on every page that Susan Fletcher appears on. Apparently Brown is worried that people won’t remember that Susan Fletcher is one of the main character is his book Digital Fortress by Dan Brown.Susan Fletcher is the best code breaker NSA has. Susan Fletcher is also beautiful and perfect and everyone loves her and wants to do her. Susan Fletcher has a brilliant mind. Susan Fletcher is also very attractive. Susan Fletcher is also smart. People look at Susan Fletcher and think to themselves “How does an IQ of 170 fit into a body that attractive? I am going to think more of these thoughts so that the reader of Dan Brown’s Digital Fortress will know what Susan Fletcher looks like in the book Digital Fortress by Dan Brown.”Your first drinking game is to take a shot every time someone chuckles.Your next drinking game is to empty a Red Solo Cup every time someone’s eyes are described as strong hazel, deep green, inky black, sable, gray, or any other color that barely exists in real life. Yes, people do have these eyes, and apparently they all live in Dan Brown’s world. Dan Brown wrote the book Digital Fortress.If you do not drink and are into health, do push ups or squats or something instead of pounding booze. Either way, we’re all going to crumple to the floor and throw up.When Susan Fletcher is called in to work on a Saturday by Commander Strathmore, head of NSA, Susan Fletcher knows that something must be very wrong. Susan Fletcher was supposed to be on a vacation with her finance David Becker. David Becker is beautiful and smart. David Becker plays squash and no one minds when David Becker puts his entire head into the water fountain to wash away the sweat. David Becker is that amazing.Turns out that the Commander has sent David Becker, Susan Fletcher’s finance, to Spain, even though David Becker does not work for NSA. Susan Fletcher thinks thoughts to tell the reader how important NSA is.Seriously, how is this guy a big name writer? I just don’t get it.Dan Brown, the author of Digital Fortress, does not have time for important things like “Show, don’t tell.” when it comes to writing his books. Dan Brown wants to get to the important things like telling the reader how intelligent and beautiful Susan Fletcher and David Becker are. Susan Fletcher and David Becker are engaged. Susan Fletcher and David Becker have been engaged for six months. Susan Fletcher tells David Becker this when she says “You do remember we’re engaged, don’t you?” which is exactly what people in real life would say if they wanted to let you know that they were engaged.Susan Fetcher stays underground in the NSA bunker trying to figure out what is wrong with their giant, enormous, massive, expensive, costly, top secret, classified translator project. The computer is used to cull through email and crack codes and save the entire planet. It has done so successfully. But now it has found a code that it cannot crack and Susan Fletcher has to use her beautiful body and intelligent mind to solve the problem.Meanwhile, in Spain, David Becker is on a crazy journey of his own. He has to find a ring because it somehow has something to do with this code. He is able to follow thin clues to track the ring from person to person. Apparently David Becker, with no training (because if he had training, someone in the book Digital Fortress by Dan Brown, would have told us about it) becomes the world’s most brilliant detective. Oh, and also David Becker is given stupid coincidences that tell him where to go next. David Becker is smart and is able to use these giant arrows to find the next person to talk to.Of course everything turns out to be suspicious and there’s lots of traitors and threats from every side. One thing I did like about the book Digital Fortress, written by Dan Brown, is that there were parts where I honestly didn’t know who the bad guy was. Luckily Dan Brown quickly tells information to make me pay attention to a specific character in his book Digital Fortress and I, the reader, can get back to the important part which is remembering that Susan Fletcher and David Becker are engaged and they are both very intelligent and very beautiful.The crazy ending was kind of fun because everyone was in the same place sort of screaming and trying to solve the problem before the entire government was shut down, but other than that… What the fuck, America? This is one of our top selling authors?In conclusion, I did not like the book Digital Fortress by Dan Brown. Not only do I not care for this type of story, I could not get past the writing. How does this happen?I don’t care if this makes me sound like a book snob, but seriously, this is who we’ve chosen as one of our Must Read Authors? For fuck’s sake.My book group meets tomorrow and I’m bringing a giant list of discussion questions. Apparently they all hated the book too, including the two people who suggested it for this month. Way to make the rest of us pay for your mistakes.
You know how some days you just feel like eating candy? And then more candy, maybe topped off with ice cream, cookies, cake? Some days that is okay. Until you get to about eight o'clock at night, and your body has reached a point that is beyond satiation. And then you think to yourself, just one last cookie. Your stomach is telling you don't do it. It's gurgling and protesting the hours of abuse it has already taken, but you keep thinking about how good that cookie is going to taste. So you do it. You eat it, and you find yourself regretting it almost immediately. You realize, in the end, that it didn't taste that good. In fact, you realized it was far too much, and you wish you could take it back because now, well now you have a full blown case of the stomach aches. And you completely regret your gluttonous behavior. That is what Digital Fortress feels like...gluttony for your brain. It was strangely addicting, completely entertaining, but had no substance whatsoever. And I think my brain is probably a little dumber for having read it. Maybe it was because I had just read Brown's Deception Point, and the last thing I needed to do was chase it with more mind numbing ridiculousness. Maybe it was because this is Brown's freshman go...his first novel. And I should give it one star. I know I should. But because it was entertaining, I had to give the guy some credit.However, when you set up a main character to be a genius...and I quote, "His eyes fell the length of her sleder torso - to her white blouse with the bra barely visible beneath, to her knee-length khaki skirt, and finally to her legs...Susan Fletcher's legs. Hard to imagine they support a 170 IQ, he mused." I'm not going to parse the whole thing. I'm willing to accept that stock thrillers such as this are rife with hackneyed descriptions of people, in particular women, such as Brown's "sexy" depiction of Fletcher. I don't read these books because I'm expecting F. Scott Fitzgerald. I read them because they are entertaining, period. BUT...notice that Fletcher has an IQ of 170. 1.7.0!!! Is that even possible? I don't know.The point is that she's this genius decoder, right? Super smart and totally able to decode some of the most complicated cipher. And yet there are very extremely completely obvious "ciphers" right in front of her face that she does not get. Really? I'm no genius. But I got them right away. So I thought that really wasn't so great. And you are this completely smart and perfectly beautiful woman, and you know when all these various men are totally into you. But the crazy one, who is so obviously into you, you don't see? Even when it's in front of your face all the time? It reminded me too much of that one Patricia Cornwell novel with this one Kay Scarpetta character who is supposed to be a genius as well. But she does some really ill advised...STUPID...things. Um, not sure I understand how someone is a genius and then suddenly isn't a genius. So that was annoying.I also think Brown cleaned up his act when it comes to sex after this novel. This bordered on a Harelquin Romance extravaganza! The feminist in me screams out in protest at such garbage. I'm all for chemistry and attraction. But I revolt at silly depictions of the perfect woman and the perfect man falling in love. They are both just sooooooooo attractive and sooooooooo smart. And they have the most perfect jobs and perfect lives. Ugh! There wasn't anything really graphic. It just felt cliche and empty. And finally, the climax. It just went on and on and on. Oh dear me, just get to the point already. It was no longer exciting when all the brainiacs in the NSA couldn't solve the freaking mystery which was right in front of their faces! And the whole thing was going to blow up, and of course the perfect couple can save the day in the end. Because they are perfect and that is what they do!!! I just couldn't suspend my disbelief anymore, so there were some serious sighs. Some eye rolling. Some straight out laughs. It was far too melodramatic. Now to be fair to Brown, I have now read all of his books, and I've obviously enjoyed them, mostly. And I think now that he's written a few thrillers, that his writing has improved. He's no longer focused on sexual liasons between characters. And while his stories are completely unbelievable, they are also entertaining. The guy isn't proclaiming that he's the next Hemingway, after all. He's selling a product. I just think that from now on, I'll take my gluttony in smaller doses.
What do You think about Digital Fortress (2015)?
No matter what people want to say about Dan Brown or his books or hatred towards him you got to admire the fact that what he brings to the table no one else does.This was the book which brought me to the beautiful world of books. Before reading this book I though reading was a bit cissy and a waste of time since everything is fictional, why not better read some spiritual/self help and knowledge books. After reading this book everything changed, I started to read more and more fiction and today books have become one of the most important parts of my life all thanks to this books.Today I have read all of Dan Brown books apart from Angels & Demons but this book remains to be my favorite. I agree that he is not a great writer and uses the same formula in every of his books, not versatile at all. But he holds a special place and I will always hold a special place in my bookshelf because of the reasons I mentioned above.
—Ankit Agrawal
It is truely mind-boggling how Dan Brown can get away with putting so many factual errors about cryptography and computers into a single book. Doesn't he have anybody proofread his manuscripts? It is also surprising that a so highly praised writer can write so badly.In "Digital Fortress" we enter a universe where:* A 64-bit code requires 64 characters to type. (Fact: 64 bits can be easily typed with 16 characters or less.)* Public Key Cryptography requires the exchange of a secret passkey. (Fact: One of the nice features about Public Key Cryptography is that it does NOT require the exchange of a secret passkey.)* The concept of an unbreakable code is an impossibility as it violates the "Bergofsky principle". (Fact: The "One-time Pad" encryption invented more than 90 years ago is unbreakable (but often unpractical to use).)* A password consisting of five random characters is a really good one.* If you hide a backdoor in an algorithm, only the author of the algorithm will be able to find it.On a less technical side, in "Digital Fortress" we enter a universe where:* A German addresses a total stranger as "Du" instead of "Sie".* A university teacher willingly accepts a secret overseas mission for the NSA, just because the man who calls him happens to be his wife's boss.* A young man who appears to have lived for a few months in Spain doesn't know the difference between dollars and pesetas. (The book was written before the Euro currency was introduced.)* The NSA apparently have no backup of the data in their main databank.* Pigs actually do fly. (Okay, I didn't acturally read that, but I'm sure it must be in there somewhere.)Add to this that the characters behave in ridiculously silly and unlikely ways. (For example, this man wants to buy a ring from a frightened, young woman. Does he say, "I would like to buy your ring"? No, he says "You have something I need; but I'll pay you for it," which of course frightens the woman even more.) Add some annoyingly long filler sentences completely lacking in content and serving only to use ink.Not a good book. The only reason I read it to the end was because I kept believing that it must get better eventually. It didn't. In the final crisis the book reaches new levels of bad writing: * The computer science is bogus.* The assembled scientists cannot solve this problem: "What number best expresses the difference between Uranium 238 and Uranium 235?". In the final second of the crisis, after twenty minutes of thinking, somebody suddenly, surpisingly discovers that the answer is 3. (I am not exaggerating!)* The writing style is an incredibly long-winded, drawn out, ink-wasting collection of superfluous words. (If the world was about to fall apart unless you discovered an important number in the next five minutes, would you spend that time pointing out to your colleagues that the word "man-made" is not a number? No, I thought not.)
—Claus
Based upon how very little I'd heard about Dan Brown's two non-Robert Langdon books, I went into this one with very low expectations. However, Digital Fortress is a fairly well-written and entertaining novel. The main storyline is based upon a hush-hush operation within the NSA to obtain and or destroy the only existing copies of a pass-key that, if made public, could enable the use of an encryption program that would create coded messages that would be entirely unbreakable thereby rendering the NSA obsolete and allowing undecipherable communications between terrorist organizations and crime rings throughout the world. The storyline takes place mainly in two separate locations: the top two members of the encryption team trying to break the program and track down the pass-key from headquarters and in Spain where the search is on for any possible physical pass-key possessed by the recently deceased creator of the program.This is a pretty fast-paced novel with lots of action on both fronts. As usual with a Dan Brown novel, things get a bit unbelievable at times, but that's part of what makes them fun. He has created an interesting cast of characters and circumstances that really keep the storyline moving along at his usual break-neck pace. I had fun reading Digital Fortress and would recommend it to fans of Mr. Browns other works and also to those who enjoy thrillers along the lines of James Patterson if you haven't yet read any of Dan Brown's other works.
—Stefan Yates
