In Streams of Babel, the book that preceeds this volume, Plum-Ucci introduced readers to a series of teens pulled into the center of the War on Terror. Four teens (among others) living in a s small New Jersey town named Trinity are infected in with a bio-engineered virus that causes widespread illness and even the death of two of their mothers. The Trinity Four, as they have become known in the press, have become stabilized and have been moved to live on a small estate in a New Jersey coastal town with the hopes of keeping them alive until a cure can be found for Q3, the disease with which they have been infected.

Each of the teens is dealing with their own personal issues as they try to keep up the fight to survive with blinding headaches, bloody noses, and other dangerous symptoms. Romance is blooming. Cora is confronted with the loss of her mother, who abandoned her with her grandmother to continue her career as a photojournalist on the frontlines of war zones all over the world, during the initial attack. Brothers Scott and Owen are also dealing with their mother's death, and one of them has also developed a life-threatening anuerism that makes his condition even more dangerous than the others. Rain is having trouble with trying to live a normal live among all of the challenges they are facing as a group.

Two other teens play a major role in our story, though, they are secretly working for the government as cyberspies in the hopes of hunting down terrorists. They were the ones who tracked down ShadowStrike, the terrorists who started this whole thing in the previous novel. Tyler's mother has been arrested for spying on America for the North Koreans, and Shahzad is an Afghani who was recruited for the work because of his proven methods while working in his homeland with his cousin.

While they were infected by ShadowStrike in a secondary attack, they are still on the job. That is a good thing because it seems like ShadowStrike is not done with their plans for America.

I was really excited to know that a sequel was coming out because I really wanted to know what happened to all of the characters after the really intense first novel. The book really has a great storyline, but I think it get a bit bogged down by having too many subplots flowing through it. Each of the characters has his or her own plots and all of this is centered around the resolutions from the previous book and a new terrorist plot. As a result, the novel is a too long and really doesn't have the quick pacing that such a story should have. It should feel like a roller coaster with the reading holding on as the story progresses from one thing to the next.

I don't want to say it is a bad book because i really did enjoy it. And each of the stories is interesting on its own, but the book just seems to bite off more than it really can sustain. The book seems to also swing into an odd focus on the various relationships between the Trinity Four as it shifts gears toward the conclusion. The result is a flat landing on what was really a pretty exciting concept.