How We Found You by JT Lawrence (When Tomorrow Calls Book 2)

How We Found You by JT Lawrence, 2017
(When Tomorrow Calls Series, Book 2)
Available in print and Kindle at Amazon

Other books in series:

• Why You Were Taken (When Tomorrow Calls Series Book 1)
• What Have We Done (When Tomorrow Calls Series Book 3)

Genre: science fiction techno dystopian action thriller
Setting: Johannesburg, South Africa,  2024
Rating: Enjoyed and recommend

This is the sequel to Why You were taken and book 2 of the When Tomorrow Calls series. Four years after the events in Why You Were Taken and Kate (formally known as Kirsten) and her (sort of) twins -- daughter Silver and son Mally -- are living with her brother Seth. Kate can't shake a persistent fear that her family is still threatened. And she is right. The Resurrectors, a violent cult, fueled by an apocalyptic prophecy, are after Mally and will do anything to get him. Making the threat a cult appeals to me. The radical fundamentalist religious figures making the news promoting the idea of the apocalypse and calling for the destruction of non-believers is genuinely scary. Sadly, a cult picking a target for their prophecy seems all too plausible.

This is a sequel I really wanted to see written. The characters and setting are so well drawn and interesting that I wanted to know what happened to everyone. Fortunately, enough readers had the same feeling that Lawrence delivered.

How We Found You is a tense psychological action thriller that had me reading compulsively. the author writes very convincingly about the near future and populates it with characters you care about. Kate is compelling. Lawrence draws her as a woman suffering from PTSD with a smothering anxiety about her children. She is such a fiercely loving and devoted mother that when the threat actually materializes she has the inner strength and ability to meet force with force. She is a badass willing to kickass to protect her own. Seth is no slouch is this area either. There are excellent action scenes, particularly toward the climax, that I think would be amazing on screen.

How We Found You is set in the near future and you would expect advances in technology. I appreciate how the author shows technological advances as extensions of what we already have. The reader isn't bombarded with gee whiz stuff that are dramatically science fiction. Look at the development of self-driving cars and 3-D printed and functioning mouse ovaries and consider what is the natural extension of that.

Characters we met in Why You Were Taken return in larger and significant  rolls: the freelance journalist, Kekeletso (Keke) and her significant other, Marko the uper geek.

There is a trigger warning for this book. How We Found You does have scenes of children in extreme peril. These scenes are well executed and integral to the story but pulled an OMG reaction from me, a pretty hardened reader.

What Have We Done by JT Lawrence (When Tomorrow Calls Series Book 3)

What Have We Done by JT Lawrence, 2017
(When Tomorrow Calls Series, Book 3)
Available in print and Kindle at Amazon

Other books in series:

• Why You Were Taken (When Tomorrow Calls Book 1)
• How We Found You (When tomorrow Calls Book 2)

Genre: science fiction techno dystopian action thriller
Setting: Johannesburg, South Africa,  2036
Rating: enjoyed and recommend

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

The Fionna Griffiths series by Harry Bingham

Titles in the series in order:
1. Talking to the Dead
2. Love Story, with Murders
3. The Strange Death of Fiona Griffiths
4. This Thing of Darkness
5. The Dead House
6. The Deepest Grave

Rating: I like and recommend

I am looking at the series as a whole but I don't think there are any spoilers. You can get plot summaries at the Amazon links above and at the link to the author's website below.

Discovering a new series is one of the great joys in the life of an avid reader and I have a post in a Facebook post for bringing these books into the house.  Even more joy, I was late to this series so I had five to read at once. I powered through all five available at the time in short order. While I wanted to read slowly and savour the text, these are "no good stopping place" books meaning I had to read just one more chapter. Number six came out this summer and is now waiting on my Kindle so I can continue my binge watching.

If you like to categorize your reading, I'll call this series crime thriller with procedural elements and a sub-genre of defective detective. Fiona Griffiths is a very junior DC (detective constable) in Cardiff, Wales. She is short on social skills but an extraordinary detective capable of connecting events and data more so than any of her peers. Her superiors recognize Fiona's abilities but find themselves challenged when it comes to managing her. OK, you might be saying "Not this plot device again" and I might ordinarily agree but Bingham handles the interactions between Fiona and the higher-up in the force very well and often with humor.

Why did I include this series in the "defective detective" sub-genre? Something happened to Fiona as a teenager that left her with an affinity for the dead and and about 90 degrees off-center from the way everyone else thinks and acts. What happened to her is a real corker of an idea and one the reader needs to discover for themselves. I will say that she's not a Lisbeth Salander or Sherlock Holmes type.

The stories are first person from Fiona's viewpoint. She is very self-aware of how different she is from everyone else which adds humor as she tries to figure out how a normal person would react. This really comes out as she tries to relate to other women. My wife thinks Bingham does very well writing a female character. Her only criticism so far is that Fiona never has a period.

We also get wry observational humor from Fiona:

Accounts come in pairs these days. A middle-aged man in a dark suit and a sheen of perspiration, plus his younger accomplice, a woman who looks like her hobbies are arranging things in rows and making right angles.

It is a common occurrence when one of us is reading a book that the other has finished that the reader will chuckle and the other demand to know where they are in the book.

These series needs to be read in order as there are threads that run through all the books. This verges on serious spoilerdom so I'll just say that one thread is personal to Fiona and the other relates to something in book one that has repercussions throughout the series. Sometimes the threads cross. Bingham is a master at subtly weaving these threads through the books.

The plots are complex without being dense and the author manages to explain the complexity without making it an infodump. Seriously, Bingham makes Fiona looking at spreadsheets interesting. Here is a taste—if you've ever wondered how police are trained for undercover work in the UK, you'll find out.

The books do sometimes rely on coincidences that might stretch your credulity a bit but honestly, you don't care, the stories are just so much fun to read.

Check out Harry Bingham's website. If you sign up for his newsletter he'll some bonuses he'll share with you..