I haven't read a whole lot of novels involving time travel -- I've usually found the whole idea of time travel both fascinating and confusing. It's not easy for me to understand gamma rays, quantum foam and theories of relativity. Fortunately, even though the Tomorrow Code refers to such concepts, scientific details are at a minimum and I can easily follow the storyline (and not get bored).

When Tane and Rebecca get the crazy idea of analyzing gamma ray bursts for possible messages sent from the future, they discover that there are indeed patterns in the data -- suggesting that they might be right about the ability to send messages through time. When they finally decode the patterns, they realize that they have lottery numbers, and yes, win 6 million dollars. But the message consists of more than lottery secrets. If they've decoded it correctly, the message has instructions to buy a submarine and stop an experiment on viruses, followed by an SOS. All of it sounds pretty outrageous and they wonder if they should actually do what the message says... until they realize the message has been signed TR -- Tane and Rebecca. If they have sent themselves a message from the future, maybe there's an important course of events they need to change -- a chance to prevent a dangerous situation they will find themselves in later on.

The book was a bit slow in the beginning and the action really doesn't come until the last part of the book. There was a good twist in the plot at the end, but I am not sure the book will hold the attention of someone looking for something that is exciting all the way through. The idea of people sending messages from the future in an attempt to prevent world disaster that humans themselves have created isn't particularly original -- I could pretty much predict what was going to happen (except for the twist at the end which probably saved the book for me). The idea of antibodies attacking humans and the theme of human environmental destruction reminded me of books I previously reviewed on this blog: Catherine Jinx's Living Hell (except that Living Hell was action packed the whole way through and had many more gory details on people being ingested by macrophages)  and David Klass' Firestorm.

All in all, I'd still recommend this novel to those looking for an easy, straight forward sci-fi read. It's interesting enough -- and vampire free.

Given the final book in the trilogy just came out about two weeks ago, it's a good time to take a look at the book that started it all.

Another plane has safely landed at the JFK airport, but it shuts down suddenly and every light goes off. When all attempts to communicate with the plane fail, they call in various emergency response teams, including Dr. Eph Goodweather of Disease Control, fearing that something has happened to the people on the plane. Something did...and it's going to spread to people on the ground. Eph reluctantly teams up with a seemingly out-of-his-mind professor and Holocaust survivor and together they battle an ancient evil.

Pan Labyrinth's Del Toro has taken the classic vampire and given it a make-over and drained anything that is "romantic" about the concept. Instead, he gives us something totally gruesome and horrifying and definitely not for the squeamish. Everyone has his/her own demon to deal with literally, and the humans seem to be fighting a long losing battle right from the start. It's kinda hard to keep up with the big cast of characters, and there is only so many times you can truly feel scared and worried as you read about these vampire attacks.  Still, there are some great cinematic scenes and it's a good one to suggest to mature readers who are looking for something that will "scare your pants off" (what a kid told me she's looking for the other day)