The Tomorrow Code, by Brian Falkner

This book I reserved and picked up from the library, because I remembered being interested in it after the Lateiner Gang did their own review on it a couple months ago. I was really glad I read this book. The writing style is very intriguing and sucks you right into the story. I liked how the kids in here are really smart, thinking about time travel and all. Plus, I didn't know this when I first started reading it, and it took a while for me to realize it, but I found out that this is a book that takes place in present day New Zealand. I don't know much about New Zealand, but the people there don't really seem that different from Americans. Go figure.

So I really liked this book, because it's got a little bit of romance, thrown in with the anticipation of the end of the world, and a lot of speculative science. First of all, the question is asked, is time travel practically possible? The answer is unfortunately no. Not in this book's universe it's not, anyway. But communication through time? Hmm... now there's a fascinating possibility. Of course, you can only send messages to the past, because it's impossible to skip over time. But if you're going to send messages at all, there needs to be a way for one to receive the messages in the first place. So these brainy kids writes some sort of program... something to do with looking for patterns in gamma rays or something... and eventually they actually get these messages from the future.

Of course, in the beginning it's all just 1s and 0s, as in binary code, but soon they are interpreted and these kids discover that they will become very rich, but also that the fate of the world rests in their hands. And if they can't save the world, then they'll just have to be prepared for it...

The writing was fantastic. My only quip is that the last several chapters got a little confusing for me. There are these fighting scenes with the military involved, see, and really, hardly anything made any sense. Perhaps that was the point... but still, I felt most comfortable and back on track when the view point was brought back to the main characters. Plus the ending was a little funky. Something happened that I felt was highly unlikely, and not quite resolved, but it ended anyway. I can't really tell if this book will become a series or not, but my guess is that this is the end of the story. I'm kind of glad about that. Despite this bump in the road in the final part, the book kept me engaged and my overall reading experience was a good one. So I recommend it.

Another thing I liked was that a couple of the book's characters were chimpanzees. They're originally used for experimentation, since DNA-wise they're near identical to humans (it's still cruel, though >,<), but the kids free one of them and take her along on the adventure. I wish I could meet a chimpanzee. I've not been to many zoos in my life. But I don't just want to be on the other side of a partition. I'd like to say hello and offer him a banana. ^_^ Just one of my fantasies.