Primal Fear

Meshuggah

Jorn

Firebrands

Eluveitie

A.O.T.W.

more interviews?

Band:Dan Brown Album:Digital Fortress Record Company:St. Martin's Paperbacks Writer: Sherri Carras Click Album Cover To Buy Now

WARNING: small spoilers contained in this review

Digital Fortress is a technological thriller by Dan Brown. It was first published back in 1998, well before his breakout bestseller, The DaVinci Code.

Brown presents a strong set of main characters in this first outing. We have Susan Fletcher, a brilliant, beautiful, NSA code breaker. Her fiancé, David Becker, is also featured as he journeys halfway across the world to Spain. Susan faces dangers and betrayals inside the vast Crytpo Dome that houses TRANSLTR, NSA’s top secret code breaking beast of three million parallel processors. We get to watch her mind at work trying to determine who the real enemy is. Despite impending danger on all sides, and worrying about her fiancé, she never turns into the weepy little ‘help me, oh won’t someone help me’ heroine that action thrillers portray so often.

David Becker holds his own as a fish out of water. He is a college professor, sent on a top secret mission to Spain, with no backup, and no idea why he’s really there. On his tail is a creepy little assassin in wire glasses that feature some high tech email device that allows him to transmit confirmation of all his kills. And there are a lot of them in this book. He’s also deaf. Seems Dan Brown prefers assassins with little oddities like that.

Despite so much against him, and roadblocks to success at every turn, David doesn’t buckle under the pressure. It’s even believable how often he extricates himself from near death situations, because he uses common sense, and a little luck.

The basis of the novel is Digital Fortress, a supposedly unbreakable code that Ensei Tankado, a brilliant Japanese programmer who once worked for the NSA, has developed. Tankado is definitely on the side of individual privacy, and has fought long and hard against the other major player, Commander Strathmore. You can guess which side Strathmore is on, since he heads the TRANSLTR project, and worked to keep the public in the dark about it. Tankado is threatening to release Digital Fortress for public download, rendering TRANSLTR useless, and the NSA crippled. His price for not releasing the code? Make TRANSLTR public. Let the world know that the NSA has still been reading everyone’s email for years, while playing the lame duck. The choice is decidedly ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t,’ which is why Strathmore brings in Susan to help break the passkey that Tankado is going to release to the public. The passkey would allow the NSA to program in their own ‘backdoor’ before the code goes public. Once again, the NSA would appear unable to break any of the codes, but in reality would be reading every tidbit of information sent. Creepy thought, isn’t it?

The story is told in short chapters, which accentuates the action, and also makes it a quick read. It was hard to put down in the last hundred pages, because Brown kicked up the pace and the drama. There are a lot of characters you only meet briefly, which was fine in the beginning of the book, but at the end, I felt a little cheated being introduced to a handful of entertaining folks, and get so little time with them. However, the main characters are written well, and you understand why they do what they do.

The only complaint I have with the story would be towards the end, when you get the sense Brown is rushing to finish the tale. Yes, the pace must accelerate in this genre, but not to the point where great leaps are taken only because of convenient flashes of brilliance and insight on the part of the characters. I don’t want to give away the ending, but I think most people will agree that it wraps up just a little too neatly. It’s not enough to be a letdown, but you can tell this is a first novel because of it. Brown’s writing style feels like he’s impatient, and even a little bored with this novel. Maybe he already had his next book in mind, and wanted to get this one out of the way?

The heart of Digital Fortress’ story is the right to privacy. Does the greater good of catching criminals, drug lords, and terrorists outweigh the individual’s right to send an email, and know only the intended recipient will read it? Dan Brown seems to favor the right to privacy, as nothing but trouble besets the NSA in its fervor to crack the unbreakable code of Digital Fortress. Supposedly he gained insights about the NSA through a couple of ex-cryptographers. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know. I’m not knowledgeable enough about the technologies he writes about to know fact from fiction. But I do believe our government would willingly keep us in the dark about what they can and can’t do, and do it in the name of patriotism. For being a quick read action thriller, this novel does end up making you think, and hesitate just a bit in hitting ‘send’.

Ethical debates aside, this is not a book I will read again. I enjoyed it, but now that I know the twists and turns, it just would not be enough fun. If you are looking for a fast read, with emphasis on the story over the characters, I recommend this. I would wait for it to be on sale somewhere first, though. It just isn’t worth the full cover price. Feel free to click on the Amazon link, and buy a few other items while you’re there so you can get the free shipping. Then it will be worth it!

Band:Dan Brown Album:Digital Fortress Record Company:St. Martin's Paperbacks Writer: Sherri Carras Click Album Cover To Buy Now

To post comments CLICK HERE!