The Bar Code Tattoo (The Bar Code Trilogy, Book 1) (1)

(Spoilers ahead)

I quite liked the first half of this book. It's actually more unnerving than a lot of other dystopian novels since it's very, very close to life right now. The idea that people would get tattooed with a bar code that contains all their ID and financial information is sort of the direction we're going now: paperless, efficient... I'm not a conspiracy theorist and I loves me my debit card and internet shopping, but this novel, only a step or two down the path we're on, actually gave me pause.

I liked it so well, in fact, that I found myself wishing the author weren't writing for a young adult audience; the book could have been fleshed out and expanded and would probably be appreciated by readers of all ages. A little more depth would have done it justice...but that's not to say that I wasn't enjoying reading it as it is.

And then around the middle of the book, it got a little too bizarre. First I could overlook the extremely rapid move from nebulous oppression to characters who just happened to stumble on the malevolent new world order of genetic modification and cloning and wholesale slaughter of the imperfect. I could even overlook the wildly implausible escape by a girl too stupid to know that email could be tracked and who kept managing to stumble across friends and enemies while traveling and hiding out in a huge region. (One coincidence is fine. Lots of them tell me that the author is getting lazy.)

Well, I guess I didn't overlook these things so much as suspend judgment until I could see where it was going.

Where it went was a step through a trans-dimensional portal and into the Celestine Prophesy. Suddenly humans fighting the bar code have evolved virtually overnight into superior beings with funky mental powers. And never mind that I was disliking the protagonist more and more; she starts out asserting that she despises those girls who put on an act just to nab a boyfriend, and then turns into one of those very girls. I mean, a character that unaware of herself and that judgmental without even a nod to the irony in her own new love isn't terribly likeable. (You can almost hear her whining, "but you don't underSTAND how real this is!")

The problem, I think, is that the initial appeal of this book was in its realism. Its potential for predicting reality. And if the author had just put down the hash pipe and held off her new age conversion for a hundred pages or so, this book would have been quite good. And that almost-awesomeness actually makes me dislike this book more than I would have if it had just started out all weird. Instead, it's like a bait and switch.

Meh. I'll give it two stars since the beginning was good and the length meant I only wasted a few hours of my life. But all the shaking-my-head-in-disgust keeps me from giving it any more than that.

SUMMARY:

On her 17th birthday, Kayla is elegable to receive her bar code tattoo. The tattoo contains all your information completely eliminating the need for physical copies of anything: medical records, banking information, etc. But something's not right. After her father gets the tattoo, he gets severely depressed and eventually commits suicide. Her best friends parents got fired and have lost all access to their information. Her mother dies attempting to burn her tattoo off. Kayla just doesn't want to risk it. She gets very suspicious and joins an anti-bar code movement at her school. After the bar code becomes law, Kayla must flee to avoid getting tattooed, so she runs to the mountains where the resistance is forming.

PROS:

1. It is very fast paced, no boring/slow parts whatsoever
2. It's fairly realistic. It's the sort of thing that could eventually happen in our society. It gets more science fiction towards the end though.

CONS:

1. Being so short and fast paced, there is little time to get to know the characters. It seems that the focus of the book is more on the events than on the characters. I would have liked a slightly longer book if it would have given the opportunity to understand the characters better.
2. Towards the end, the realism of the book fades, and it turns more science fiction, with the resisters somehow evolving to gain telepathic powers almost overnight, with little explanation as to why.
3. Kayla falls in love with two characters one right after the other. After she finds out her first boyfriend was a traitor to the cause, she falls in love with a new guy just a few chapters later. You could argue that, after losing every single person she ever loved, she was just latching onto anyone who would love her back. It was still annoying.

RECOMMENDATIONS:
I would recommend this book to someone who wants a quick but exciting read. I think that the plot twists would be predictable to adult readers, but a good level for teens or even young adults.

THE SEQUEL:
I have read the two other books in the trilogy, The Bar Code Rebellion and The Bar Code Prophecy, and found them both to be far superior to this one. It was worth reading this one to get to the next two.

This book was horribly written. There was no character development and events were rushed. It just seems that no one bothered revising and adding details, or anything that would make the story come alive. I've read better from my elementary school students.

Things for Kayla progress from bad, as in being told her computer grades disqualify her from an art scholarship, to worse, when she refuses to accept an identification bar code tattoo on her seventeenth birthday.

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I was very disappointed in this book. The premise had so much potential, but the writing was poor and the plot was not developed well at all. Maybe if she rewrote the whole thing and got a better editor….

Actually, I’ll elaborate just a bit on the “poor writing” comment: It was written as if by a 13-year-old writing their first story for English class. That is to say, the idea was solid enough, but the execution needs work. There were several scenes where it seemed as if the author didn’t know where her character’s were. For instance, at one point they went from laying together by a pond or lake (I can’t remember the specific water feature) and then one of them kneels down by the other. There were other problems, a rambling writing style that was unclear much of the time and bland the rest. This is why I say it isn’t just a problem of the writer, but also a problem of the editor not doing their job well.

This book had an interesting concept with poor execution. Every event was very convenient to the point of being surreal. Yes it is a book, and should not be completely realistic, but characters should have difficult hardships so overcome over a long period of time, not 2 seconds. Half way through the author did a 180 on plot and switched from the actual premise to an entirely new one. And besides that switched writing styles halfway through the second portion of the novel.

All in all 10/10 do not recommend if you actually like yourself and reading. And if you don't like a waste of time.

This book was comprised of disorganized thoughts, and many scene/time jumps that are not accounted for. You will find characters appearing, disappearing, and reappearing again with no explanation as to how they managed to not only escape from where they were, but furthermore how they came to be in that place with the main character again. There are quite a number of unlikely coincidences that create for an unrealistic environment. It was a quick read, and since I love dystopian fiction I was looking forward to this one. I feel that the author could have done better sticking to one topic rather than tackling the bar code tattoo/cloning/evolutionary leaps. The relationships are circumstantial, and the author does nothing to develop the other characters beyond minimal introduction. Skip this one, it's not worth it. For a similar story - read "Stung" by Bethany Wiggans. It also is a short read, but the storyline is more clearly developed, and the timeline makes sense.

Debut near-future dystopian novel. Interesting premise, not so awesome writing. It's most certainly not Weyn's best work, but it is what got her some attention. There really wasn't a huge amount in this genre at the time (2004) and she did well breaking in with something different.

I've read reviews that tell you the story is predictable. It's not. Well, it wasn't for when it was first published. Sure...it is now, when dystopian YA fiction is all the rage. The characters are all a little weak, and yes, Weyn has some disjointed connections here and there. But the book isn't a lost cause.

The story doesn't wrap up neatly, which is a plus. You want some closure for Kayla and the love triangle she finds herself in while running from the government. So...you pick up the second book.

Debut near-future dystopian novel. Interesting premise, not so awesome writing. It's most certainly not Weyn's best work, but it is what got her some attention. There really wasn't a huge amount in this genre at the time (2004) and she did well breaking in with something different.

I've read reviews that tell you the story is predictable. It's not. Well, it wasn't for when it was first published. Sure...it is now, when dystopian YA fiction is all the rage. The characters are all a little weak, and yes, Weyn has some disjointed connections here and there. But the book isn't a lost cause.

The story doesn't wrap up neatly, which is a plus. You want some closure for Kayla and the love triangle she finds herself in while running from the government. So...you pick up the second book.

Recently they have made a Bar Code tattoo. You can use it to buy stuff, get jobs, and stuff like that. When you turn seventeen you are allowed to get the "tattoo".

Kayla's parents have gotten the tattoo's, her friend Amber has gotten the tattoo, and just about everybody else has gotten the tattoo. When Kayla turns seventeen she is hesitant to get the tattoo. She has her suspicions, and when her dad kills himself because of the tattoo she defiantly doesn't want to get one. But what could the tattoos have that causes people to go crazy, lose their jobs, or, in some cases, get promotions, and gain in life?

Kayla joins a group of other teenagers who don't have the tattoo. Resisters are all over the world. Including the famous group 'Decode'.

When having a bar code tattoo becomes a law, the resisters scatter and hide.

You will have to read to find out what happens! This is a great book and I recommend it!

Really good book 📖 my daughter had to read it over the summer she loved it