While readers in the UK will have to wait until August 2o14 for Daryl Gregory’s AFTERPARTY to be released by Titan Books, the novel is out this month in the US (Tor Books). Kirkus has selected (entirely justifiably, in our all-too-humble opinion) the novel as one of their ‘Best Bets for Speculative Fiction Reads – April 2014’. Here’s what they had to say:

WHAT IT’S ABOUT: Technology meets Big Pharma in a story where anybody with an Internet connection can download recipes and print their own drugs—even if those drugs turn out to be deadly.

WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT: Science fiction excels at asking “What if?” questions and this merging of mind-altering drugs with easily accessible technology is a great platform that does just that.

We’ll be sure to share more information on the UK release of the novel as soon as we have it. In the meantime, here is the full synposis for the novel:

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’sUbik, and perhaps a bit of Peter Watts’s Starfish: a last chance to save civilization, or die trying.

In related news, Kirkus recently published their glowing, starred review of AFTERPARTY. Here’s the take-away:

‘An eye-popping glimpse of a near future when designer drugs are commonplace… This taut, brisk, gripping narrative, dazzlingly intercut with flashbacks and sidebars, oozes warmth and wit… A hugely entertaining, surprising and perhaps prophetic package that, without seeming to, raises profound questions about the human mind and the nature of perception.’

Zeno represents Daryl Gregory in the UK and Commonwealth, on behalf of the Martha Millard Agency in New York.