First published 2019
Nick Hayes is fifteen, a Dungeons and Dragons obsessive, and a boy-genius who just got the worst news of his life. It is January 1986, and the diagnosis is probably terminal. That should be enough to deal with. It is not. Nick and his tight circle of friends run weekly D&D campaigns and mostly keep the real world at arm's length. Then Mia joins the group, and reality stops cooperating. A man Nick has never met begins following him through the streets of suburban England. The man knows things he should not know. He can do things that should be impossible. And he carries a warning: Mia is in serious danger, and she has no idea. Nick has to figure out who this stranger is, what the threat to Mia actually looks like, and how to stop it. Standing between him and any of that is a body that may be running out of time, a violent man with a knife, and a set of physical laws that appear to be breaking down around him. The friendship at the center of the story keeps it grounded. These are kids who solve problems with dice and graph paper, suddenly facing something no rulebook covers.
Genres: science-fiction, coming-of-age, mystery, thriller, young-adult
Vibes: dark, emotional, fast-paced, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: coming-of-age, found-family, mysterious-stranger, time-pressure
Setting: Suburban England
Period: January 1986
197 pages · Paperback · 47North
Content warnings: death, terminal-illness, violence