The Bar Code series is back for its third and final installment with THE BAR CODE PROPHECY, a thought-provoking and chilling tale for the young adult reader in your life. This book is told in the viewpoint of new character Grace, a seventeen year-old on the verge of getting her mandatory bar code tattoo. In the previous books (which I recommend reading before this one), Kayla Reed and her band of bar code resisters have revealed Global-1's treachery in trying to purify and improve the human race by secretly playing with genetics and forcing everyone to get the tattoo which contains their genetic code. If there are any diseases or imperfections in your code, Global-1 would activate nanobots in your bloodstream that will kill you. Even though Grace's story is the focus in THE BAR CODE PROPHECY, Kayla and the other tattoo resisters are still prominent secondary characters.

Grace and many others in the world now believe that Global-1 has removed the genetic codes and nanobots from all the older bar code tattoos previously given and claim that the conspiracy was due to a few extremist scientists in their labs. After Grace gets her tattoo, she finds her family missing and receives help from Kayla and her group of resisters. On the run from Global-1, who has placed a tracking code within her tattoo, Grace isn't sure who to trust or even why Global-1 is after her. She learns that she is adopted and the daughter of the creator of the Global-1 corporation, and at the heart of a Hopi prophecy of the end of days.

THE BAR CODE PROPHECY is a quick read for a younger teen. There are some serious issues of corporate control and environmental awareness as well as a global catastrophe that occurs, causing many people to die. Although there is some small resolutions to the story at large, if your teen is sensitive or if the reader is younger than high school age, this book might not be appropriate. There is mild romance to the story that is appropriate for any age. The characterization seemed rather thin and perhaps it was because of the short length of the book and appearance of numerous others in the story. There are some inconsistencies of the science in the storyline, but as this is a science fiction/fantasy novel, I could suspend my disbelief while reading. Overall, I think the author Suzanne Weyn has done a good job in creating a short novel that will make the younger teen think about global issues and how to make a difference.

Book Summary

The third book in the Bar Code series, in which one girl struggles to escape the conformity of a dystopian world.

Just as in the original Bar Code Tattoo, the year is 2025 and the mysterious, ubiquitous, and seemingly omnipotent multi-national corporation, Global 1, is in power through their agent President Loudon Waters. But now this ominous situation is experienced through the eyes of sixteen-year- old Grace Morrow. When Grace finds out that she's adopted, her biological father, who's the head of the Global 1 nano-bot injection project, urges her against getting the bar code tattoo when she turns seventeen. Stunned by the revelations, she goes home to find her adoptive family vanished, and she's determined to find them, turning to the anti-bar-code group Decode. As they uncover more information about tracking, Grace must hide deep underground and under cover, trying to discover information that will allow Decode to figure out what Global 1 is up to, and trying desperately to shut the organization down for good.