This is what I thought of Digital Fortress by Dan Brown. I am not a professional book reviewer, nor am I particularly educated or talented in the writing direction. But I am a consumer of books, and as such I am allowed to comment. (actually, I haven't finished this one yet, but since it looks as though I might not, I am writing this now)

Brief plot outline

Ruggedly handsome, athletic, brilliant but impoverished Professor of linguistics (?) is engaged to staggeringly beautiful, brilliant head of cryptology at the NSA. Oh yah, and since the NSA get the crème de la crème of American Universities, they pay big bucks. So she's gaggingly gorgeous, brilliant and rich. Oh and I can't remember their names (wait, I think she is Susan) and I absolutely can not be bothered to check. Sorry.

Yes, I also started to want to throw up at that point, and it was all on the first page, but bear with me... The point of the NSA is to keep America safe. Their chosen path to attain this worthy goal is to monitor everything that everyone on the planet says to everyone else on the planet. We're talking surveillance on a massive scale here.

So far no surprises.

In excruciating detail we learn how commercially availabe encryption programmes are not safe because the NSA has a superduper computer which can break every code known to man and machine.

No prizes for guessing what comes next.

Yep, an unbreakable code. The code writer dies mysteriously, and the key to his cryp must be found or... well, the NSA will be out of a job because they won't be able to read our emails.¹
Where was I...

"An unbreakable code? How can this be?" thinks our Heroine's boss and promptly despatches Heroine's boyfriend to get the personal effects of the code guy.

Fun and games ensue.

But That's as far as I'm going, because:

a) I don't want to give away the plot

and

b) I really can't take any more thinking about this book

And so, Sho, what did you think?

First you need a wee bit of background about me. It is no secret that in a previous chunk of my life I was in the Army. Military Intelligence to be precise ² Without going into too much details - since you never know who is reading this stuff - those three letters were not unknown to me. And since I have an interest in codes and stuff I was bound to stumble upon this one. Especially given that read the Da Vinci Code and promptly bought everything by Dan Brown that he could get his sweaty mits on.³

Secondly, let me say that I cut my writing teeth on fanfic. And one of the biggest fanfic offenses is the Mary Sue Character. For a description of that, please see Mr. Prophet's entry about Fan Fiction.

The writing is awful. Really, truly and abysmally awful. I cant remember much of the Da Vinci Code, but I'm pretty sure that the writing was not as bad as in Digital Fortress. But then, I was feeling mellow and on holiday. Maybe I was being charitable. Maybe I had sunstroke. More likely I had nothing else to read except a guide book in Croatian.

The truly staggering brilliance and beauty of the main (good) protagonists is truly and staggeringly sick making. And I realise that the purpose of a thriller is to set up a few blind alleys of "is HE the baddie" type, it is not necessary to make almost every other character in the book one of them.

Stop it DAN!

I got about two chapters into this one before I realised that I was going to donate several hours of my too sort life to reading this stuff. I (almost) never stop reading a book, no matter how bad. This one is, however, making me rethink that attitude. Life really is too short to read something that gives you the feeling that you want to gouge out your own eyes rather than read another page.

In short: I did not like this at all. Nothing about it. The characters and the plot might have been partially saved by good writing. But it didn't happen.

Marks out of ten?

I suppose giving a minus mark out of ten would be silly. I will give this one a big fat 1. But only because it might encourage someone to go into that line of work. Which would be interesting. For them.

Intrigued?

Why not check out what I had to say about other novels/works in my Summary of things I have read