Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Thomas Sweterlitsch

Audiobook Narrated by Adam Paul

Genre: SciFi (Cyberpunk) / Mystery
My Rating: **** (4 of 5 stars)

I had a hard time deciding how to rate this book at first because of the subject matter. The story is somewhat more disturbing than what I normally read, but it is a murder mystery as well as sci-fi, so you have to expect some unpleasantness. There are some terrible people doing terrible things. There are also some not so terrible, everyday people accepting, and occasionally even enjoying, terrible things. The worst (or best depending on how you look at it) part of it all is how believable everything is. In the end though, I did enjoy the book and decided that it deserves 4 stars. It is a very well thought out and well-written story that kept me listening every minute I could until it was finished.

Tomorrow and tomorrow is set in the not-so-distant future. People use implants called Adware to email and connect with other people they run into, and to deliver streaming content right to their eyes, 24 hours a day. The targeted marketing being used by the advertisers in this book will feel familiar to anyone who has ever browsed the web, and it’s so close to current reality that you never even question the technology.

In this future America, Philadelphia has been wiped out by a terrorist attack. John Dominic Blaxton, who lost his wife in the attack, works for an agency that researches deaths for an insurance agency. There are so many cameras everywhere, that a digital archive of the city has been created, and people are able to virtually visit the city and the people who once lived there. When a claim is made against a life insurance policy claiming that someone died in the blast, Dominic’s job is to go into this archive to find the person at the time of the explosion and prove that they did actually die when the bomb that took out the city went off.

In a nutshell (and to keep myself from giving away anything important), Dominic uncovers things he was never meant to find and ends up running for his life. While trying to stay alive, he is also trying to piece together the last moments of a murder victim’s timeline, and find the person responsible for deleting another woman’s images from the archive.

The narrator, Adam Paul, did a great job and I’m really glad I listened to this one. The first few minutes, I was annoyed by his voice, but it grows on you, and his style fits the story well. (If anyone has listened to William Gibson reading Neuromancer, you’ll probably understand what I mean!) He also did a great job of expressing Dominic’s anguish, shock, and frustration when appropriate.

Whether you prefer to read or listen to your books, I would recommend this one to scifi fans, as long as you don’t have a weak stomach. 🙂

WARNING (in case you prefer not to read this sort of thing): There are some graphic descriptions of violence, and graphic descriptions of corpses along with some vulgar language.

Visit Thomas Sweterlitsch’s website (be sure to check out the Adware page)

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