A science fiction thriller, award-winning author Daryl Gregory's Afterparty features a scientist on a mind-bending and violent chase across Canada and the U.S. to undue the harm her creation has done and save civilization.
It begins in Toronto, in the years after the smart drug revolution. Any high school student with a chemjet and internet connection can download recipes and print drugs, or invent them. A seventeen-year-old street girl finds God through a new brain-altering drug called Numinous, used as a sacrament by a new Church that preys on the underclass. But she is arrested and put into detention, and without the drug, commits suicide.
Lyda Rose, another patient in that detention facility, has a dark secret: she was one of the original scientists who developed the drug. With the help of an ex-government agent and an imaginary, drug-induced doctor, Lyda sets out to find the other three survivors of the five who made the Numinous in a quest to set things right.
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Lambda Literary Award - Nominee, Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year, NPR Best Book of the Year
CHAPTER ONE
"So you want to leave us, Lyda?" Counselor Todd asked.
"It's been eight months," I said. "I think it's about time, don't you?"
Dr. Gloria shook her head, then made a note on her clipboard.
The three of us—Todd,...
Praise for Afterparty
“Wickedly clever entertainment.” —SF Gate (San Francisco Chronicle) on Pandemonium
“Part superhero fiction, part zombie horror story, and part supernatural thriller, this luminous and compelling tale deserves a wide readership beyond genre fans.” —Library Journal, starred review, on Raising Stony Mayhall
“A quietly brilliant second novel. . . . A wide variety of believable characters, a well-developed sense of place and some fascinating scientific speculation will earn this understated novel an appreciative audience among fans of literary SF.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review, on The Devil's Alphabet