This review, however, specifically covers the book itself.

I have to admit that I was intrigued to read a Pulitzer Prize winning, post apocalyptic novel. There can’t be too many of those around, can there? After I got used to the fact that Cormac McCarthy doesn’t bother with much punctuation (most likely symbolic of the stark landscape that the man and his son find themselves in), I was really sucked into the story. I could very easily imagine what everything looked like and what life must have been like for them.

With that said, though, I was actually surprised that it had won the Pulitzer. I have read better books that have not won the Pulitzer — books with a better plot, better character development, and better imagery. I’m honestly not even certain that there was a protagonist who comes to any sort of realization and changes. Or that there really was any sort of real climax, for that matter.

The ending of the book didn’t surprise me much either. In fact, I’d be surprised if anyone after the first few pages wouldn’t have guessed what happens to the man in the end.

Still, the book is very well written with its Hemingway-esque starkness that quickly pulls you into the man’s life and struggles.

I would highly recommend reading it once. Despite the fact that it is only a little longer than a short story, I don’t think I’d ever read it a second time, however.

I don’t really have any interest in seeing the movie, either, though I don’t doubt that it will make a very compelling and exciting one.

Dan Brown has picked a new hero for us to follow — or a couple of them. One of the NSA’s top cryptologists and her boyfriend find themselves in the middle of a political fight between a government trying to prevent secrets from threatening the peace of the United States and a cryptologist trying to protect the rights to privacy of everybody on Earth. An ex-NSA cryptologist is supposed to have developed an encryption called Digital Fortress, a self-mutating string capable of encrypting anything in such a way that no computer anywhere can possible decrypt it.

I thought Dan Brown didn’t know what he was talking about. I thought that maybe he should have done a little more research.

Being somewhat savvy to the realm of computers and encryption algorithms, the plot of the story was not even remotely possible. Now I’m not talking about whether or not the NSA could develop a code-breaking fiend of a computer — which I am sure is possible — but the fact that you could write an encryption program that can change on its own without the benefit of being a program itself is not possible at all. It is, after all, simply a string of characters — letters, numbers, and symbols. It can’t DO anything. It is only used by another program to do things, namely to encrypt. If you want it to DO something, it has to be able to run itself, or be run by something that knows how to interpret it.

But I digress…

I don’t want to spoil the ending for people wanting to read it, but for some reason the top cryptologist in the country could not figure out what I (who do not remotely resemble the top cryptologist in the country) had questioned from the opening chapters of the book. How could a simple string thwart the brute-force encryption prowess of the top code-breaking computer in the world unless it was a program itself or written to be run specifically by that one NSA computer and that one computer alone?

Ok. I won’t blow it for you.

If you want to read it, fine. Go ahead.

I had an easier time believing that you could haul around a tiny bit of anti-matter (Angels & Demons) than believing that a cryptologist was so easily fooled.

It ruined the whole book for me.

Whereas I loved reading his first two books, I wouldn’t waste my time on Digital Fortress.

The running around wasn’t nearly as exciting as the first two books by Dan Brown.

And the conclusion, hundreds of pages later, only made it seem like the top computer minds in the government must have gotten to their positions because their parents bribed the right officials. They certainly didn’t get their because of their intelligence.

What results is a fascinating, edge-of-your-seat treasure hunt.

This book was certainly exciting — more exciting even than his second book, the Da Vinci Code. Although the plausibility of a container of stable anti-matter being smuggled into Vatican City is a bit suspect, the story really moves. I honestly couldn’t put the book down. I didn’t care that the premise was a little far-fetched. I had to keep reading.

I would highly recommend this book to any one, even those who weren’t big fans of the Da Vinci Code. It reminded me a little of the movie National Treasure, so if you liked that movie, you’re certain to love this book.

I was first introduced to Remo Williams and the Destroyer Series through Marvel Comics. I bought a large-format comic book that said “Destroyer” on the front and featured a wonderful drawing of a man in his mid 30s being crushed against a wall by a large, blue, human-like creature. Immediately I thought that the blue creature-thing was the Destroyer, and I was anxious to start reading a new comic book that wasn’t the mainstay of all other comic fans. Once I got a few pages into the book, I realized that the Destroyer was in fact Remo Williams. A faint, flickering light bulb went on inside my brain. I’d heard the name before. Remo Williams. Oh yeah, there was a cheesy movie made about him in 1985. More of an A-Team sort of story, it showed how Remo was turned into the world’s ultimate assassin.

There have been hundreds of books written about Remo Williams. The story was created by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir. Here is the basis:

The United States of America was corrupt. Politicians were buying their way out of scandal and criminal punishment. Law breakers were getting a slap on the wrist for even the most heinous of crimes. Taxpayer dollars were going unaccounted for. The more the President of the United States looked into the corruption, the more he realized that the corruption was all around him, even in his own people. He decided to take action. Known only to him, the President created a super-secret organization known as CURE. There were to be only three members (although the movie had four): Smith, the head of the organization and caretaker of the supercomputers that gathered worldwide information; Chiun, the Korean master assassin; Remo, the strong arm of CURE, student of Chiun.

Remo Williams was found as an orphaned beat cop who served time in the military and already had a little bit of self-defense training. CURE thought he would be perfect to take on the role as its enforcer. After a few keystrokes into the world’s most powerful supercomputer, Remo is framed for a murder he didn’t commit and sentenced to the electric chair. But CURE had rigged the chair. Remo passed out, but didn’t die, and was taken into custody by the super-secret organization.

Remo was then given an ultimatum: Work for CURE or die. He accepted the offer, and Chiun was appointed to train him in the deadliest of martial arts: Sinanju (named after Chiun’s Korean village). The training was to take 15 years, but CURE needed Remo immediately. He was sent on various “jobs” to kill corrupt people and try to bring a small amount of civility back to the great US of A.

The books are actually a fun read. Chiun’s character is priceless in his quips and bigotry — to Chiun, anyone who is not Korean is deemed nothing more than a lower life form. He reluctantly trains Remo, only doing so because his “Emperor” — Smith — is sending huge crates of gold to the poor people of Sinanju. Remo learns quickly and soon becomes the world’s greatest and most deadly martial artist. His senses are keenly developed. His technique is perfect. It is quite an adventure to read.

The books don’t necessarily need to be read in a given order. I started with #64 and didn’t feel lost. Each book gives a short history of Remo and how he came to be; and each book also reveals a little more about Remo’s history than the other books.

On this site, I will give reviews for the Destroyer books I’ve read. Some are better than others; some are just plain horrendous. But together, they are epic adventures that espionage fans will long enjoy.

I have to say that I wasn’t disappointed.

Most people who are mildly to very interested in reading the book have probably now seen the movie that was recently made and has just now come out on DVD, but I’ll recap anyway.

Robert Langdon (who also appeared in Dan Brown’s first book, Angels and Demons) is a college professor at Harvard and is very well versed in history, especially in the history surrounding a lot of the Renaissance artists and the beliefs about the sacred feminine (which seem to permeate this book). While visiting Paris on a lecturing tour, he is sucked into a murder investigation where he is the prime suspect. Along the way, we find out that everything that is happening has something to do with the Holy Grail, which is not really a chalice but the literal descendants of Jesus Christ who have been hidden from the Catholic Church for two millennia.

Dan Brown does an exceptional job of bringing in a lot of thought-provoking ideas, whether you happen to believe them or not, and weaving them into a fast-paced adventure. Even if you have already seen the movie, you will enjoy all of the extra information and history that found its way into this book. In the interests of time, the movie (which I thought was done very well) had to chop out some very interesting things — the very things, in fact, which probably caused the most controversy and the most buzz. The very things, in my opinion, that push this book from a mere “very good” to a “must read”.

Even if you don’t believe it all, read the book! It’s well worth reading.