Future Threat

Gr 8 Up—In the second novel of a planned trilogy, Elena and her team are forced once again to return to the future. This time, though, their goal is not to steal technology to bring back to the present. Instead, their mission is to locate and bring home Team Echo, four youths who have failed to return to the present. Arriving in the future a second time, Elena and her team are quick to notice that this is not the same future that they were just in. As their scheduled return comes closer with each passing second, they must face the fact that a member of Echo has been killed and that they will need to return to the future once again to try to intervene and save a life. With each subsequent return, however, they fail to bring back the entire team. The shifts in the future become more and more bleak, and team members cannot resist the urge to check up on their own futures, even meeting themselves at future times. Briggs offers fast-paced action, and readers will easily forgive the occasionally didactic and clichéd dialogue as they enjoy the creative incarnations of the future, including the use of old ("flexis") and more modern ("inbeds") personal interweb interfaces.