Book Review: The Bar Code Tattoo

TITLE: The Bar Code Tattoo
PART OF A SERIES: Book 1 of 2
AUTHOR: Suzanne Weyn
GENRE: Young adult, science fiction, thriller
PREMISE: In the near future, everyone gets a bar code tattoo. Mostly because they have no choice. Kayla is suspicious of it and soon learns that it's probably a good thing she was so suspicious of it.
MY REVIEW: It's not long into this book when you realize it's one of THOSE science fiction books. You know the kind: the ones that warn against stuff going on today, question everything, etc. The problem with these kinds of science fiction books is they can go one of two ways: have interesting ideas but your bored to tears so you can't really enjoy it or reccomend it, or have interesting ideas cleverly woven into a decent story. Luckily, this is the latter kind.
Weyn keeps an excellent pace in this book. It's not difficult to get into and along the excitement it also makes you think about things and the way our society is going. The scary thing about this book is that a lot of the stuff in here is not that far off the mark of what could happen. I don't particularly believe we'll be gaining super powers (that was a little off the mark for me), but the thing about a corporation gaining enough power to do what Global-1 does in this book? I have no problem believing that. Especially with that law that Congress/whoever made not to long ago concerning corporations (if you follow politics you know the one I'm talking about).
But anyway, the future Weyn painted is grim and sadly not totally unrealistic. It makes for interesting reading. My only complaint is that characters weren't totally fleshed out and there were some obvious plot points going on. Other then that, this is a really interesting Science Fiction thriller.
WHO SHOULD READ: if you like science fiction/future type stories.
MY RATING: four out of five tattoos

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