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Bar Code #1-2
The Bar Code 2-Book Set: The Bar Code Tattoo and The Bar Code Rebellion
Includes The Bar Code Tattoo and The Bar Code Rebellion.
- GenresDystopia
Paperback
First published January 1, 2008
3 people are currently reading
229 people want to read
About the author
Suzanne Weyn
206 books647 followersSuzanne Weyn grew up in Williston Park, Long Island, New York. She has three sisters and a brother. As a girl, she was very interested in theatre and in reading. Louisa May Alcott was her favorite author, but she also read every Sherlock Holmes story. Suzanne lived pretty close to the ocean and going to Jones Beach was one of her favorite activities. Even today, if she goes too long without seeing the ocean, she starts feeling restless.
Suzanne now lives in upper New York State with her husband, two teen daughters and Abby the cat. Her house is at the edge of the woods and is nearly 200 years old. She graduated from State University of New York at Binghamton and received her master's degree from Pace University. She teaches part-time at City College in New York.
Suzanne's other books for Simon Pulse include South Beach Sizzle, a romantic comedy written with Diana Gonzalez. Her novels for the Simon Pulse line "Once Upon a Time" are The Night Dance: A Retelling of the Twelve Dancing Princesses, Water Song: A Retelling of the Frog Prince, and The Crimson Thread: A Retelling of Rumplestiltskin. She very much enjoys rethinking these classic tales from an original point of view, always looking for the real psychological underpinning of the story. Suzanne is currently doing revisions on her fourth book in the line, which will be coming in 2009.
Suzanne's other recent novels are include The Bar Code Tattoo (2004) and its sequel, The Bar Code Rebellion (2006). The Bar Code Tattoo was selected by the American Library Assoc. (ALA) as a 2005 Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers and was a 2007 Nevada Library nominee for Best Young Adult Fiction. It is currently translated into German and was nominated for the 2007 Jugenliteraturpreis for Young People's Literature.
Suzanne now lives in upper New York State with her husband, two teen daughters and Abby the cat. Her house is at the edge of the woods and is nearly 200 years old. She graduated from State University of New York at Binghamton and received her master's degree from Pace University. She teaches part-time at City College in New York.
Suzanne's other books for Simon Pulse include South Beach Sizzle, a romantic comedy written with Diana Gonzalez. Her novels for the Simon Pulse line "Once Upon a Time" are The Night Dance: A Retelling of the Twelve Dancing Princesses, Water Song: A Retelling of the Frog Prince, and The Crimson Thread: A Retelling of Rumplestiltskin. She very much enjoys rethinking these classic tales from an original point of view, always looking for the real psychological underpinning of the story. Suzanne is currently doing revisions on her fourth book in the line, which will be coming in 2009.
Suzanne's other recent novels are include The Bar Code Tattoo (2004) and its sequel, The Bar Code Rebellion (2006). The Bar Code Tattoo was selected by the American Library Assoc. (ALA) as a 2005 Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers and was a 2007 Nevada Library nominee for Best Young Adult Fiction. It is currently translated into German and was nominated for the 2007 Jugenliteraturpreis for Young People's Literature.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
April 27, 2021
The series was really good.
February 24, 2019
Just as good as the first one. Such an amazing book! You learn a lot about DNA and genes, and even though it sounds boring, Suzanne Weyn made it interesting! You should totally read this book is you like dystopian books and DNA books.
December 30, 2010
This is the first book in the bar code duology by Suzanne Weyn. It was a very good book, with engaging characters and a fast-paced plot that made the book difficult to put down.
In the year 2025 almost everyone has a bar code tattoo. It is not law yet, but most people get a bar code when they turn seventeen. At a few days to her birthday Kayla is trying to decide what to do; should she get the tattoo? See the thing is that her dad got the tattoo seven months ago and since then he has been a different person, depressed and miserable. Kayla wonders if the bar code has something to do with it. She ends up getting involved with a rebellious faction called Decode that is fighting against the bar code. Unfortunately the bar code is on its way to becoming law. The president of the US is part of the corporation doing the bar code tattoo and this corporation runs everything from the schools to the hospitals. What will Kayla choose? As she notices society getting stranger and stranger and notices more weird things happening to both the un-tattoed and the tattooed she is uncertain.
Overall this was a wonderful book. The characters are engaging. The premise is interesting, and Weyn takes it to lengths that are horrifying and frighteningly realistic. The pace of the book is relentless, the action never stops and you are pulled from disaster to disaster. For such a short book there is a ton packed in here both in action and in thought provoking material. Has this type of thing be written about before? Yeah, it sure has. Just think about Scott Westerfield's Uglies series and you have an example right there (of course that was published after this book) another example would be the Tripods series by John Christopher or some of Neal Stephenson's works. Still, Weyn does a great job making the story realistic and has the story centered around a young woman which was interesting.
I do have a couple pet peeves about this story though. These are mainly personal and of a technical nature. I have unfortunately worked with bar codes and RFIDs personally and I know that you can only hold a small amount of data on a 2D bar code like Weyn describes. With a little tiny bit of research Weyn would have known this. I realize it's a fantasy but it bothered me. The other thing that bothered me was the character's inconsistent technological know how. At one point Kayla says, "Send me your new web address, I'll e-mail you all the time." Okay, this is just odd I mean a web address is for a website, not to email someone. Really, you shouldn't screw that up in a sci-fi techno novel like this. The last thing that bothered me was when Kayla was at a house initially she was all worried about the government being able to track her computer use. Then later when she is hiding out with a rebel group, she decides to use the dusty old computer there. Then when someone tracks it she is, uh duh, I didn't realize that someone could track me here. Wow, that is just completely inconsistent!
Besides the above complaints, I enjoyed the book. I just tried to shrug the techno inconsistencies aside. This is a quick read and overall an interesting and fun read. I wish the small inconsistencies had been fixed, then this book would have been spectacular. Still, I am excited to read the next (and last) book "The Bar Code Rebellion".
In the year 2025 almost everyone has a bar code tattoo. It is not law yet, but most people get a bar code when they turn seventeen. At a few days to her birthday Kayla is trying to decide what to do; should she get the tattoo? See the thing is that her dad got the tattoo seven months ago and since then he has been a different person, depressed and miserable. Kayla wonders if the bar code has something to do with it. She ends up getting involved with a rebellious faction called Decode that is fighting against the bar code. Unfortunately the bar code is on its way to becoming law. The president of the US is part of the corporation doing the bar code tattoo and this corporation runs everything from the schools to the hospitals. What will Kayla choose? As she notices society getting stranger and stranger and notices more weird things happening to both the un-tattoed and the tattooed she is uncertain.
Overall this was a wonderful book. The characters are engaging. The premise is interesting, and Weyn takes it to lengths that are horrifying and frighteningly realistic. The pace of the book is relentless, the action never stops and you are pulled from disaster to disaster. For such a short book there is a ton packed in here both in action and in thought provoking material. Has this type of thing be written about before? Yeah, it sure has. Just think about Scott Westerfield's Uglies series and you have an example right there (of course that was published after this book) another example would be the Tripods series by John Christopher or some of Neal Stephenson's works. Still, Weyn does a great job making the story realistic and has the story centered around a young woman which was interesting.
I do have a couple pet peeves about this story though. These are mainly personal and of a technical nature. I have unfortunately worked with bar codes and RFIDs personally and I know that you can only hold a small amount of data on a 2D bar code like Weyn describes. With a little tiny bit of research Weyn would have known this. I realize it's a fantasy but it bothered me. The other thing that bothered me was the character's inconsistent technological know how. At one point Kayla says, "Send me your new web address, I'll e-mail you all the time." Okay, this is just odd I mean a web address is for a website, not to email someone. Really, you shouldn't screw that up in a sci-fi techno novel like this. The last thing that bothered me was when Kayla was at a house initially she was all worried about the government being able to track her computer use. Then later when she is hiding out with a rebel group, she decides to use the dusty old computer there. Then when someone tracks it she is, uh duh, I didn't realize that someone could track me here. Wow, that is just completely inconsistent!
Besides the above complaints, I enjoyed the book. I just tried to shrug the techno inconsistencies aside. This is a quick read and overall an interesting and fun read. I wish the small inconsistencies had been fixed, then this book would have been spectacular. Still, I am excited to read the next (and last) book "The Bar Code Rebellion".
August 9, 2010
July Books #16 & 17: While these weren't particularly great books (and in a sea of trilogies it was disconcerting to have everything all wrapped up and taken care of in the last few pages of book two), they were very thought provoking. Personally, I don't feel like we're very far away from something like this. The United States has come up with a way of tattooing your information onto your body, thus negating the need to carry any time of identification ever. Need a loan: scan the barcode. Buying a snack: scan the barcode. Pulled over for speeding: scan the barcode. The U.S. is starting to force everyone to get one, but there are the usual holdouts and things get ugly real fast when it seems there is something sinister about the barcode. Successful people are suddenly being demoted or losing their homes or finding their health care cancelled. Long story short, it is discovered that when the barcode is tattooed, a sample of your blood is also taken and analyzed and your DNA is coded in there along with everything else. So, if you go to the Doctor, they scan the barcode and suddenly they know you are prone to heartattacks: DENY COVERAGE. Also and more sinister, teensy, tiny machines are injected during the tattoo. These machines are capable of causing bodily side effects that mimic illnesses and can cause someone to commit suicide, so if someone has a tattoo but becomes a security risk or starts discovering the truth about the barcode, the machines inside them are activated until that person kills themself. Luckily, a group of kids manage to figure this all out and disable all the machines, thus saving the world.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 28, 2011
So I didn't actually read both of these books. I picked up "Bar Code Rebellion" as a library discard without knowing it was the second book in a series. It was simply written and short, but the storyline was very creative and I would have loved it if it went into more detail and was a longer story. There were so many creative, clever ideas, but it was just too brief to really get into. This idea would have been amazing if it was written by Suzanne Collins (the Hunger Games).
August 17, 2011
The Bar Code Tattoo was a selection from my Book Club. It is a futuristic book about all people having a bar code tattoo placed on their arm when they reach the age of 17. Some are resistant to the idea. A young woman named Kayla is very resistant to the idea because she feels the tattoo was connected to the death of her father. She becomes involved with a resistant group and faces many experiences as she tries to hide, and then fights out in the open.
Read
March 3, 2013* some minor spoilers*
a perfect display of what will happen if one gets power over all! with unique characters and a thrilling plot full of discovery in those two books, Suzannedoes a great job writing the book.
dont read it, thoug, if you or someone you know is terrified of the end of the world. just saying....
a perfect display of what will happen if one gets power over all! with unique characters and a thrilling plot full of discovery in those two books, Suzannedoes a great job writing the book.
dont read it, thoug, if you or someone you know is terrified of the end of the world. just saying....
October 5, 2009
This book is the best book in the world! When you read the first book you would never think that there would be six clones and that the dad was just the older brother. It can be confusing but it all makes sence in the end.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 21, 2013
Once again this is a great Series and i loved it. I thought there wasnt a third book and i started freaking out so once i can get my hands on it i will have read all of the Bar Code Tattoo series =^-^=
November 14, 2008
So good, and I mean really really good.
December 5, 2008
love them i cant b-leave that witch tried to kill Kayla!!!!
December 26, 2008
These are both great books. It's really actually kinda surprising 'cause you don't know what Kayla will do next!
March 7, 2010
soooo amazing!!!!
February 19, 2011
Two words... LOVED IT!
March 13, 2011
This was a confusing book at first, but I came to read all of it.
April 9, 2011
The Bar Code Rebellion continues where the first book leaves off. This book is a little slow at the begining but finishes off well and answers all the questions the first book creates.
July 13, 2011
Once again awasome book!!!!!!!! Most of my friends liked it!!!!!!!! Read it.
April 12, 2012
What parent hasn't thought of bar coding their newborn?
July 23, 2012
i wanted to stop using things that tracked me...kinda like this app...hehe
August 4, 2012
Good sci-fi/ adventure YA series with strong female character. Interesting reflection on issues in today's society. Would be great book to discuss.
Want to read
November 22, 2008CANT WAIT TO READ IT!!!!
May 7, 2013
it was awesome
nfs
April 11, 2018The Bar Code Tattoo (Bar Code #1) - 2 Stars
Bar codes are the way to go in the future; they have everything a person needs on them, their bank accounts and medical history. However, as Kayla soon realizes after the death of her father there might just be something more on these bar codes than the government is letting on. Bar codes are destroying some people’s lives and Kayla wants to figure out why.
Not good. This book was so boring to read I barely got through it. I did not find anything remotely interesting with the characters and the insta-love between Kayla and Zeke then Mfumbe was ridiculous. The pacing of this book was awful even if some of the ideas were good.
Not Finishing Series
Bar codes are the way to go in the future; they have everything a person needs on them, their bank accounts and medical history. However, as Kayla soon realizes after the death of her father there might just be something more on these bar codes than the government is letting on. Bar codes are destroying some people’s lives and Kayla wants to figure out why.
Not good. This book was so boring to read I barely got through it. I did not find anything remotely interesting with the characters and the insta-love between Kayla and Zeke then Mfumbe was ridiculous. The pacing of this book was awful even if some of the ideas were good.
Not Finishing Series
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews