If you've been reading my blog for a while, you'll know I'm a big fan of the Virals series by Kathy Reichs.
This third instalment, Code (following Virals and Seizure), is written by Reichs and her son Brendan, and yet again, it's a corker of a book.
Tory and her three outcast friends, Hiram (Hi), Sheldon and Ben, find themselves in the midst of another mystery when Hi introduces them to the world of geocaching - people hide things and then post the coordinates onlines, you have to go find them.
Finding a cache on Loggerhead, the island housing the facility in which the foursome caught a human form of parvovirus which gave them weird abilities, the Virals are thrust into a game with serious consequences.
The Gamemaster isn't mucking around, and if they don't win the game, the consequences will be dire.
In between the danger and mystery and strange powers, Tory is facing all the normal problems of growing up, including the ever-increasing presence of her dad's girlfriend in her life, and the annoying tradition of being a debutante.
Code is the scariest book in the Virals series so far, and also the most complicated. I thought I had the mystery sussed from pretty early on, and knew exactly who the Gamemaster was, but I didn't at all. The plot is clever and twisting, but always logical when you look back.
For me a highlight of this book was Tory's increasingly complicated social life, and the return of Chance Clayborne, the son a millionaire (billionaire?) corrupt politician, who knows something weird is going on with Tory and her friends.
I like that instead of introducing dozens of new characters in each book, Virals sticks with old characters, developing relationships between them, and showing just how complicated life can be, even without the added pressure of bring able to morph into a super strong version of yourself.
With every book in the series, the story of the Virals has become more compelling, and I look forward to what comes next.
How I got this book: Borrowed from the public library.
I've never read any of Kathy Reichs' books following Dr Tempe Brennan, and I've not seen Bones, the television series based on those books.
I have, however, read Virals by Reichs, the first in a series featuring the great-niece of Tempe - Tory Brennan. Seizure is the sequel to Virals, and it's jam packed full of action and terrifying moments.
Tory and her friends - Ben, Shelton and Hi - are still trying to come to terms with the "powers" they got when they contracted a human form of parvovirus. They've also just discovered that the research facility their parents work on, and Loggerhead Island where it is housed, is about to be sold.
This prompts the Virals to head off on their next adventure - a search for treasure buried by pirate Anne Bonny in the 1700s, and which could raise enough money for them to save Loggerhead.
What follows is close to 500 pages of really tense action. Reichs is skillful at crafting a world the right side of realistic, in spite of the fact that her characters have special powers some of the time.
Tory Brennan is a great heroine - brave, clever and still trying to deal with all the rubbish that comes with being a teenager (a boy who likes you but you don't like back, mean girls at school, your dad's new girlfriend) even while coping with the more unusual elements of her life.
The mystery at the heart of Seizure was well done, and I was unable to guess what was going to happen until I was actually reading about it.
For anyone who read Enid Blyton's Famous Five series when they were younger, the Virals series is like that (four teenagers and a dog), but ramped up 10 times and firmly set in the 21st century.
Seizure is a great sequel that lives up to the promise of the first novel in the series, and it's also enough to prompt me to want to hunt out the Bones books.
