Deception Point

Deception Point

Rating: 3/4 (Engaging read)

NASA has discovered a meteorite in an Arctic glacier which has fossils of extraterrestrial life forms! That is the premise of the book Deception Point, the third book by Dan Brown. The protagonists in the story are Rachel, an intelligence expert for the NRO and Tolland, an oceanographer. Rachel’s dad is a Presidential candidate who is hellbent on winning the Presidency by bringing to light the recent inefficiencies and failures of NASA. Rachel is requested to visit the Arctic to confirm the details about the meteorite. Could such extraterrestrial lifeforms have formed the origin of life on Earth? What Rachel discovers there casts a big doubt on all this.

The book is a good read. It is far better than Brown’s Digital Fortress. Much like his other books, though the story might be quite lame, Brown keeps throwing interesting tidbits along the way that keeps the reader quite engaged.

Digital Fortress

Digital Fortress

Rating: 3/4 (Pretty decent yarn)

I read the novel Digital Fortress over the rainy weekend. This is Dan Brown’s first fictional work. The story involves the ultra secret NSA and its cryptographic department. The NSA has built a computer with 3 million processors named TRANSLTR which can crack any ciphertext using brute force. But, it is one day challenged with a ciphertext that it cannot crack. The creator of the new encryption algorithm named Digital Fortress threatens to go public with this algorithm if the NSA does not reveal to the world that it has been snooping on the world’s information using TRANSLTR. Wait, there is more. There is a chance that some of USA’s biggest secrets will be revealed to the world.

Compared to the popular The Da Vinci Code, Digital Fortress is amateurish, especially the first half of the novel. The main protagonist is a female cryptographer who is in love and has a fabulous figure to boot! (I am not saying I have seen her, Dan Brown describes her like that. 😉 ) The book rests on cryptography, so the author tries to explain all the crypto jargon in layman terms. This read as quite funny to me in most of the cases. In parts of the book the EFF and the right to information also show up. Thankfully, by the the time I reached the second half, the book became a nail-biting page-turner with Brown throwing up twist after twist. Quite an enjoyable read.

The Da Vinci Code

The Da Vinci Code

Rating: 4/4 (Thrilling fast read)

“History is written by the winners.”

Read the thriller The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. Robert Langdon, a Harvard University symbologist finds himself in trouble when Sauniere, the curator of the Louvre Museum in Paris is found killed under bizarre circumstances and the clues point back to Langdon. However, while dying the curator has left some intriguing symbols on his body and in the museum. Why did he do that? What is he trying to convey through them? Finding that might help Langdon to prove his own innocence. Sophie, a French cryptologist joins him in the quest for learning the same. They find out that the curator was actually the head of a secret society: Priory Of The Sion. The society is guarding a most elusive historical object, one which could shake the foundations of Christianity itself: The Holy Grail. Langdon and Sophie find themselves in the quest for the Grail and against the unseen enemy who is bent on destroying the Grail to protect itself.

The Da Vinci Code is a fabulous thriller. Un-put-downable! Dan Brown delights with the details of historical facts, people and places. Fact after fact of modern Christianity is put into doubt as the author points to clues that are all around us. Works of Leonardo Da Vinci play a major role in the novel. I found myself crosschecking the clues in the novel using the internet and examining Da Vinci’s works of art. And to top this, as the novel progresses, Sauniere’s puzzles just keep on coming in increasing complexity. A thrilling read.

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