Digital Fortress

168 words.

I finished Dan Brown’s Digital Fortress last night. It’s a very typical Dan Brown novel (that is, sort of a cross between the Hardy Boys and Oliver Stone’s JFK), but I didn’t think it was as good as DaVinci Code and Angels & Demons. Um, perhaps I should say that it’s below the quality level found in DaVinci Code and Angels & Demons, because I wouldn’t want to give the impression that any Dan Brown novel is “good.” At best, I’d call them “kind of entertaining.”

Digital Fortress, however, suffered a lot from the author’s rather obvious lack of computer knowledge. He knew just enough to be dangerous and perhaps to impress a non-computer person (just like most highly paid computer consultants), but it’s hard for me to completely suspend my disbelief when the characters start talking about an unbreakable code that uses a “rotating cleartext.” Um, yeah, whatever.

One cool thing about Dan Brown novels, though, is that they set the bar pretty low for aspiring novelists.

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