Meg's Fiction in A Flash

Digital Fortress by Dan Brown

This novel is a pleasant surprise and deviation from Brown's masonic symbolism trilogy. Yes, I realize this book was published before The Davinci Code and the like. Let's just say I'm a late bloomer to the earlier works of Dan Brown.

From the prologue, this story is off and running in true Dan Brown style. Also, in Brown's style, the prologue places readers in one setting, while the first chapter takes readers to a completely different continent. Brown's prose are detailed but not overly so, thrilling, suspenseful, and fast-moving. The text springs to life and is constantly moving forward at a rapid pace with which readers anxiously keeping up, frantically flipping page after page.

It's not hard for a true fiction lover to sink his/her teeth into a Brown novel. Conflict abounds, and he masterfully weaves multiple plots into one thick, compelling story as readers worry about individual characters, government conspiracies, and national security threats. Calling this novel a page turner is an understatement. And just when you're in the thick of it all, thinking you've made some progress, and you're sure who's good and who's bad, Brown puts one little paragraph in there that forces you to question everything you thought you knew.

Brown always has a romantic subplot, and this novel is no different. This subplot is always masterfully intertwined into the major plot of the story leaving readers pulling not only for the good guys to win and the threat to be destroyed, but also for the lovers to be reunited and live happily ever after, or at least happily until the next national security threat. The emphasis put on this subplot is generally well balanced within the framework of the story.

Dan Brown follows a very successful mystery/thriller formula but makes it feel less formulaic with the depth of the characters he develops. He also plays with issues that are current and very real in today's society. The idea of a government agency responsible for reading emails and listening to phone calls in a counter terrorism capacity may once have been a dream, but is now very much a reality and thus something people are already considering the ramifications of. So Brown's fictional account of the possibilities of an agency like the NSA and the breadth of its control is interesting, scary, and eye-opening making for a great novel.