In tomorrow’s world where the edges blur between addictive virtual reality and real life, would you hurt your daughter if it was the only way to set her free?When gaming junkie Silver doesn’t make it home on the eve of her sixteenth birthday, Kate and Keke go out to find her. It’s a treacherous journey navigating a city in the midst of a flash civil war. Shrouded in electrosmog and panic, it’s … in electrosmog and panic, it’s been taken over by vigilante bot hunters as a violent AI uprising puts everyone Kate loves in danger, especially Mally and his anthrobot girlfriend.
With the Doomsday Prophecy looming large, Kate discovers there are forces at play she’d never guess at, and much more at stake than just her or her children’s lives. What she’ll need to do to keep everyone safe will stretch her beyond every hard limit.
Will Kate play the game?
Cyberpunk meets the robopocalypse on the edge of litRPG in this dark futuristic dystopian thriller. Jack in and get ready for a headsplosion with this third book in the riveting series When Tomorrow Calls.
Ready? Your next addiction starts now.
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Wow! What a mind trip! This tale opens several years after the ending of Book 2 but there’s plenty of things in this story that refer to earlier books in the series so it wouldn’t make a stand alone book. Mally and Silver are both nearly 16 and they have grown up in a very different world than their mother Kate (who is a self-imposed technosaur). For the first half of the book, we’re really just getting to know the tech of the day and catching up with the characters we’ve fallen in love with along the way.
Keke is still my favorite character. She’s got a bigger role in this novel than she had in Book 2 (yay!). Marko, her friend with benefits/non-exclusive significant other, has run off to an ashram in India and Keke is a little heartsick over it, not knowing if he will ever return. Meanwhile, Seth (Kate’s twin brother) has stuck around to help raise the kids and he still has this torch burning for Keke. By the end of this book, I think he might be a great fit for her even if she’s still pining for Marko. Kate herself is trying to be a good mom but two rebellious kids in a world filled with tech that Kate doesn’t fully understand makes things difficult. Zack has been doing hard time at SkyRest for all those pesky murders in Book 2.
Silver is way into full immersion. She loves her RPG games but also the circle of friends she has there. She’s good at it too so she wants to get a weave implanted so she can go even further in her favorite immersive game. Alas, that’s not allowed until she’s 18 or perhaps at 16 with her mom’s permission. She’s too impatient and that leads to trouble. Then there’s Mally who has fallen in love hard with Vega, a sentient robot. The two have been in a relationship for several months after meeting online and then later in real life.
I really liked catching up with Zack. His past 12 years are covered in a series of short flashbacks to show how his trial went, basic incarceration, how he ended up at SkyRest, and all that goes on there. There’s this odd character, Bernard, who terrorizes (or perhaps looks out for) Zack. Her character arc grows unexpectedly in the last quarter of the novel and I wouldn’t mind learning more about her.
OK, so robots are everywhere and doing everything for humans in this near future South Africa. Some robots are strictly service bots with no AI and then there’s a whole range of AI in the more complex bots. Some bots have rights and some don’t. Like sexually harassing a lingerie bot is illegal but is only referred to as interference and doesn’t carry the same weight as such an act against a human. There’s those that are fighting for equal rights for the bots and there’s those that don’t want any rights for the bots.
Then a few bots loose their crap and people die. Runawayrunawayrunaway! The second half of the book is more interesting to me because so much happens, there’s so much action, but also these really good questions of how many rights man-made AI should have and are they really a danger, or rather, more dangerous than the average human. Lots of great, intense scenes here!
The ending gives us a big mindscrew. Yep. Oh my! I loved it because it means our heroes have to take a big leap. But I also hated it a tiny bit because the ending isn’t definitive and I don’t know if there’s another book in the series. The tale could end here… but then there would be some lingering questions concerning Marko and Vega and a few others. All together, I quite enjoyed the ride. 4.5/5 stars.
The Narration: Roshina Ratnam continues to give a great performance. While there were fewer opportunities to perform various African accents, Ratnam still had distinct voices for all the characters and her male voices were believable. I especially enjoyed her emotionally charged scenes, like that big one between Silver and Kate near the end. She also had great slightly robotic voices for the AIs. I liked her angry, jealous, protective voice for Bernard. 5/5 stars.
I received this audiobook as part of my participation in a blog tour with Audiobookworm Promotions. The tour is being sponsored by JT Lawrence. The gifting of this audiobook did not affect my opinion of it.
DON’T BLINK!!!
Fast paced, action packed, heart pounding, pulse racing, adrenaline pumping, page turning read that grabs your attention from the start. The scenes and characters were so realistic with such graphic detailed descriptions that it really brought this read to life. A hard hitting tale with twists, turns and unexpected surprises that kept me on the edge of my seat. Truly a mind blowing experience that leaves you wondering at the possibilities presented. I enjoyed following the characters as they bloosmed and grew with such a complex plot. A real rollercoaster ride of emotions that reel you in and keeps your imagination engaged. Great job Lawerence bringing this read together beautifully. Thank you for sharing this little guy with us.
Stunning is the only way I can describe the ending of JT Lawrence’s final book in the When Tomorrow Calls trilogy, What Have We Done. I did not see the conclusion coming and when I got there my reaction was “Whoa” (actually it was WTF) closely followed by “OK, Lawrence set this up beautifully and I like it and she better be working on another trilogy”. This is a windy way of saying the author really knows how to put a story together.
Where we are in the story? It is 2036, 12 years after the events in How We Found You. Kate’s son Mally has turned 16 and Silver will soon have her 16th birthday. In How We Found You, Mally was the object of The Prophecy of a doomsday cult. Mally would bring about the end of the world if he turned 16. This isn’t something that Kate, her brother Seth, and best friend Keke can forget. Mally and Silver, being teenagers now, have different rolls to play here. They are much more their own agents. Mally has a “girlfriend” (more on this below) and Silver is deeply immersed in simulations.
The action periodically shifts back 12 years to 2024 and shows us what happened to the mysterious Zack Girdler, the “suicide agent” last seen confronted by Kate in a hospital restroom. Things have not gone well for Zack.
In the present, reports start hitting the news feeds of serious incidents that seem to be caused by failures of the artificial intelligences ubiquitous in people’s lives and the running of society. The body count rises as more failures occur. Is this a robot rebellion? Is the singularity upon us? Or did the prophecy from the Book of Lumin actually foretell the end times?
I enjoy the way the author integrates technology into the series. What she writes isn’t so far out that the reader can’t relate but is grounded in advances we can see the beginning of today. Like artificial intelligence (AI). By 2036, AI is deeply embedded into all aspects of daily life including the infrastructure. This makes the breakdown especially catastrophic. In our present, we have the visionary entrepreneur Elon Musk with his own prophecy: “With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon”.
Lawrence’s future extends the development of AI to give us biomechanical robots so advanced that they are called anthrobots and there is a movement to grant them full rights as sentient life forms. Mally’s girlfriend, Vega, is one of these robots. Kate is a bit creeped out by Vega but Seth and Keke accept her as normal and have no problem with their relationship. I liked this because it shows how common a part of society these constructs can become. As we later see, not everyone is so accepting. Do a Google search for “sex dolls artificial intelligence” if you want to see what’s happening today in this area. Maybe 2036 isn’t that far away.
At the top of this post, I described this as a science fiction techno dystopian action thriller. These are all genres I enjoy reading and it’s great to see them all in one book. Lawrence doesn’t disappoint. I’ve covered the SF aspects of the story in detail with the techno angle. Oh, one other thing, people apparently don’t have to worry about data plans and running out of mobile minutes which definitely makes it science fiction. Likewise, society collapsing is dystopian but add in pollution so bad people have to wear masks to avoid getting black lung and this isn’t a place you’d want to live. The action thriller bits are wow! Lawrence has a knack for action particularly for violent action. No character is safe from peril and hard decisions have to be made. By the third act the characters literally are in a fight for their lives and the level of tension and suspense is high.
In summary, What Have We Done delivers everything I could have wished for:
Excellent wrap-up of the series
Series ends with the best book of the series
Great tension, suspense, and action
World building you can believe in especially by integrating technology into the story
Characters you’ve come to care for
Genuine whoa! moments