Book Review: Future Threat by Elizabeth Briggs (Future Shock #2)

Six months ago Aether Corporation sent Elena, Adam, and three other recruits on a trip to the future where they brought back secret information--but not everyone made it back to the present alive. Now Elena's dealing with her survivor's guilt and trying to make her relationship with Adam work. All she knows for sure is that she's done with time travel and Aether Corporation.

But Aether's not done with her--or Adam, or fellow survivor Chris. The travelers on Aether's latest mission to the future have gone missing, and Elena and her friends are drafted into the rescue effort. They arrive in a future that's amazingly advanced, thanks to Aether Corporation's reverse-engineered technology. The mission has deadly consequences, though, and they return to the future to try to alter the course of events.

But the future is different yet again. Now every trip through time reveals new complications, and more lives lost--or never born. Elena and Adam must risk everything--including their relationship--to save their friends.

My Review:
The first thing I actually noticed was that the blurb isn't accurate about what happened in the previous book, a detail that I do find a bit annoying. Be aware that it also does give away who lives and dies so read it with care!

It is six months since the events surrounding her return from the future and Elena is suffering because she failed to save all of her friends. She is painfully aware that she is being followed and suspects that Aether are keeping an eye on them to ensure their silence. Adam is frustrated that his research is going slower than he wants as he works on the cure and Chris prepares himself to be a good husband and father, unlike the future that he saw for himself. But all of their plans are thrown into chaos when they are summoned to Aether Corporation HQ for tests. Instead of health checks, they are drugged and wake up locked inside the transporter with a mission to find a missing team who didn't return.

When they reach the future thirty years ahead they are met by Dr Campbell. He tells them that Team Echo were seeking data and vanished. One of the team members is the son of CEO Vincent Sharp and is high priority to be rescued. Another version of Elena's team rescued all but one of the team but got no answers as to what happened. Now Elena's team must recreate the rescue and get answers, but they also have a chance to save Ken if they find him in time. The problem is that they have to split up if they are to find all the team members in time, and this future is far more advanced than their last trip thirty years ahead. It is also too tempting for Elena to try and seek help from her future self who might not want to see her.

This was a more complex version of the time travel story and I loved it! The team are following in the footsteps of themselves which they find a bit strange and that means that they need to try and avoid their other selves as they try to recreate the same mission. They want to try and save Ken but not knowing what happened to him gives them limited information to work with. Team Echo were actually on an espionage mission to steal from rival firm Pharmateka, and this mission becomes important in their rescue attempts. When things start to go wrong, it is unclear if everyone will make it home safely and if there is more that Elena can do to stop anyone else from dying. I loved the complexity of this story and how every little decision they have made back in the present has changed so much the future that they are going to! It was great to see that there are consequences from every little action that seemed unimportant.

Elena suspects hat Team Echo may be looking up their future selves as her team tried to do on their first trip and she is aware how badly wrong that can go. It was great to see Wombat, and to learn about the future selves of Adam and Elena and what their lives have become. It was fun to see that the tech that was brought back from the first trips has led to an ever more advanced future. I liked meeting a whole new team and getting their stories and motivations and it mixes in nicely with Adam's own desire to find the cure quicker. I also liked the introduction of Ava, which mixes things up a bit. I did have thoughts about what was going down and I was pleased to be proven right in the end, but of course I can't talk about that!

This was an excellent sequel. It had the same basic story but this time because the reader knows that basic story, the author was able to add more layers and a more complex plot which I think worked beautifully. There was the same level of tension and excitement to the plot but this time I admit that I had serious anxiety about one of the characters! I found this every bit as good as the first book and I felt that the story really delivered. There were the same elements that made the first book so good and then there were different things that just added to it so well. A really enjoyable sequel!

Read November 2018.
5 stars.