Afterparty

February 17, 2014
In a mental hospital, world-wise Lyda meets teen Francine, who’s in withdrawal from Numinous, a drug that makes you religious. Lyda helped invent Numinous and thought it no longer existed, but Francine’s symptoms are unmistakable. With the help of an angel only Lyda sees—a result of her own Numinous overdose—and her ex-lover Ollie, a former government agent and fellow patient, Lyda heads out to stop whoever is making Numinous again. The hunt leads her to female Afghan drug lords, shady dealings in the Mohawk nation, a murderous faux-cowboy, the daughter she gave up for adoption, and maybe God. Gregory (Unpossible and Other Stories) dashes off his near-future story like a “chemjet” printing out sheets of smart drugs. Both irreverent and sympathetic to the sincere Numinous-addicted believers, the tragi-comical satire dispenses with sermons and easy morals, preferring to be entertaining and thought-provoking instead.

Starred review from April 1, 2014
An eye-popping glimpse of a near future when designer drugs are commonplace, from the author of Raising Stony Mayhall (2011, etc.). It's a future where anybody with a chemjet printer and a recipe from the Internet can create designer drugs. In Toronto, biochemists Lyda and her genius wife, Mikala, IT whiz Gil, finance specialist Edo and lab tech Rovil start a company dedicated to developing a drug that would combat schizophrenia. They achieve success with Numinous, but the drawbacks, alas, become apparent too late: It's addictive, the effects are permanent--and those who take it gain the unshakable conviction that a personal deity accompanies them. Worse, after taking a massive overdose--how this all comes about emerges only gradually--Lyda stabs a now-estranged Mikala to death, or so it appears. Gil takes the blame; Edo goes hopelessly crazy; Rovil seems functional. Declared insane, Lyda's locked up along with her invisible companion, a guardian angel called Dr. Gloria. While incarcerated, Lyda learns that a drug very much like Numinous has hit the street in the form of a sacrament dispensed by a new church. To prevent an epidemic of psychotic zombies, she must escape, locate the other survivors of the original five and put a stop to it. She'll need the help of Ollie, a brilliant but drug-ravaged intelligence analyst. Among the obstacles they'll negotiate are a drug-dealer gang of Afghan women; Native American cigarette smugglers who take great delight in outwitting the U.S. Border Patrol; and Vincent, a psychotic assassin who farms miniature buffalo in his living room. 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.

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Starred review from April 15, 2014
In the near future, designer drugs can be produced by anyone with a chemjet printer. As the lead developer of a drug called Numinous, Lyda Rose knows the dangers of these new pharmaceuticals firsthand. Numinous was supposed to cure schizophrenia but instead caused uncontrollable visions taking the form of a very real, very personal manifestation of God. The hallucinations meant the drug was too dangerous to develop and also put Lyda in a mental hospital. When a girl on the ward with Lyda shows every sign of having taken Numinous, Lyda and her paranoid and usefully dangerous lover Olivia break out of the hospital to find and stop the other creators of the drugs. The tension grows as they get closer to the secret of who is producing Numinous, with the stakes made more real because of the amazing characters of Lyda and Olivia. VERDICT International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (IAFA) William L. Crawford Fantasy Award winner Gregory ("Pandemonium; Raising Stony Mayhall") takes on the pharmaceutical industry, drug dealers, religion, and the intricacies of how our brains work. The way the author combines the energy of a thriller with the ideas of sf is reminiscent of William Gibson's best one-step-into-the-future novels like "Pattern Recognition".

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