Charles read and liked Holly's review of The Lost Symbol (Robert Langdon, #3):

"Obviously, this book disappointed me greatly. I kept plugging along until about half-way through when i realized that absolutely NOTHING had really happened in the storyline. It didn't even feel like a Dan Brown book. The excitement, and nervous anti...more Obviously, this book disappointed me greatly. I kept plugging along until about half-way through when i realized that absolutely NOTHING had really happened in the storyline. It didn't even feel like a Dan Brown book. The excitement, and nervous anticipation i've felt while devouring his previous books, was nowhere to be found. My eyes were literally glazing over from Brown's attempt to sound scholarly about the minutest details of the most boring, and inexplicable 'scientific' subjects. Where both Angels and Demons and The Da Vinci Code succeeded in grabbing my attention right away with intriguing plots and believable characters, this book felt cold, stiff and read like a textbook instead of a novel. After waiting 6 years for the next chapter of Robert Langdon's story, i think it probably would have been impossible to live up to all the hype surrounding it. However, Brown could have, and SHOULD have done so much better.(less) "

Charles read and liked Claus's review of Digital Fortress:

"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 ca...more 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.)
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Charles liked a trivia question:
Which author was an advocate for temperance? see if you know the answer »