A review by catnipfields
Digital Fortress by Dan Brown

2.0

Before reading this book I even thought saying Dan Brown is my favorite writer. Now I can say - definitely not. Overall, he still maintained the general idea of secrets, codes and suspense, but this one disappointed me. Firstly, too much of romance and lovey dovey fiancees stuff, not to mention the love triangle (though at least the latter contributed to some of the logic of the plot). Secondly, I was easily able to figure out who was the villain quite early. Thirdly, Dan Brown's inaccurate obsession with usage of Japanese characters or themes makes me roll my eyes - I'm not an expert at Japanese, but I'm pretty sure the name Tankado is not really correct and it should have been Takado instead (and even though it was necessary for one of the codes, Takado could have been used for that as well), also, Soshi Kuta doesn't sound like a realistic name either (and trust me, I've heard plenty of Japanese names), especially for a female, and it was stuffed with all the references with umami and haiku and kanji... Additionally to those, almost all of the scientific/historical references seemed placed unnaturally, almost forced to us to show off the knowledge of the writer, which to me never was the case in his other books. And most importantly, I figured out at least 80% of the final cipher/code, whereas it took some 15 pages and a bunch of incorrect guesses (or even no clue what it was) for someone who make a living out of it working in NSA. Seriously?