God is a drug in this near-future medical thriller.

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.

A mind-bending and violent chase across Canada and the US, Daryl Gregory's Afterparty is a marvelous mix of William Gibson's Neuromancer, Philip K. Dick's Ubik, and perhaps a bit of Peter Watt's Starfish: A last chance to save civilization, or die trying.

( Just because her guardian angel is all in her head doesn't mean she's not real. )

Verdict: Afterparty is a worthy piece of modern speculative fiction, with some genuinely original ideas and diverse and interesting characters, all of which are driven by a good if not entirely unpredictable plot. 8/10.

Also by Daryl Gregory: My review of Raising Stony Mayhall.

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My complete list of book reviews.