Showing posts with label Brian Falkner. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brian Falkner. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

The Tomorrow Code

The Tomorrow Code

Brian Falkner


For Tane and Rebecca, the end of the world starts with a simple discussion about the possibilities of sending, or receiving, messages from the future. Soon, they discover a way to read information from gamma ray bursts in space, translating them into binary code and then into Morse code. Alarmingly, they discover that they have (or will, depending on how you look at it (or when you look at it)) sent themselves messages warning them about a biological disaster that will soon strike New Zealand, then spreading to the rest of the world. It is up to Tane and Rebecca to decode their own cryptic messages and save humanity.

I honestly don't really know what to say about this book right now. I'm kind of in book-shock. I have never seen an ending to a book remotely similar to this. It wasn't necessarily bad, but it could be taken that way by some readers. (The last chapter does help a little.) Okay, I will get over it enough to write this review, here I go for real.

Those of you who follow @CoreysBookTalk on Twitter, you may have noticed this post:
Started The Tomorrow Code today. So far it isn't holding my attention, but beginnings of books are frequently slow. We'll see how it goes..
It turns out I was one page away from the intriguing stuff starting....I was just being a little impatient, which is abnormal for me to be with a book. It may be because it started quite slower than the last few books I read. In all honesty, it was quite a normal start. About half way through, maybe a little before, it seemed like there was not going to be much action. At that point, I nearly wrote another tweet saying as much, but then I remembered my bad timing before and kept going. Once again, the action started up right away. Things started getting downright creepy pretty quick, especially once it was established that the human race was the germ, not the infected being. Also, the attacking biological entity was very creepy, especially since it was accompanied by the mysterious mist and couldn't really die...I don't want to say too much more and give away the whole book. The whole discussion about the possibilities and impossibilities of time travel and the paradoxes that it may cause, namely the grandfather effect, were very confusing yet interesting, even though it is only messages, not actual time travel. It also makes you wonder if there are messages from the future waiting for us to decode...

Would you try to break into the lab to stop the Chimera Project or simply talk to Victoria about it?

Not knowing about the salt water solution, how would you have gone about fighting the "snowmen and jellyfish"?

Do you believe that in any instance in the future that Tane and Rebecca will actually save the future or will this ending always repeat, even with the improved clues?

Please leave your thoughts and answers!

Sunday, December 26, 2010

Brain Jack

Brain Jack

Brian Falkner


Sam Wilson is not an ordinary teenager. He is an elite hacker that lives in futuristic New York. Somewhere between our time and his Las Vegas was destroyed by a nuclear bomb, and with rising technology levels, the entire world is on edge with extreme new security. To Sam, this seems like a challenge. Sam hacks in to one of America's largest corporations, ordering a new computer and a neuro-headset for him and his friends. The headset is controlled by your mind, eliminating the need for a keyboard and mouse. The headset simply reads your thoughts, and it can even project sound a images into it. Through a complicated series of events, Sam is hired by a secret branch of the government to prevent people like him from hacking the United States's important computer systems. Everything seems quite boring until Sam and his co-workers are hacked themselves! An intese battle begins, but they are facing no ordinary hacker. This time, it's peoples' minds that are being hacked...

This book by Brian Falkner was absolutely amazing. Yes, I say that a lot, but it is quite frequently true. The book immediatly had me hooked in the beginning with a detailed description of how Sam would hack you, the reader. Though the hacking parts of the book can seem confusing, especially how they actually see the process in real life, it is also very exciting, and real action sequences make the book very intense. The whole gravity of the situation once it escalates is mind blowing, but it also seems realistic of the described time period under the terrible circumstances. This book is very good and actualy is what inspired me to start this blog up again - I wanted to share this book.

How would you try to prevent game addiction?

Do you think that you would be able to tell the difference between implanted memories and real ones? Do you think that the lack of emotion is distinguishable enough to be effective?

Based on Sam's "fixing" the world of its problems, do you think that this chaotic world is now a utopia? Why or why not?

Please give me your thoughts and opinions!