Charli Drever's stunningly emotional, frantic, genre-spanning debut Panacea is a YA science fiction thriller masterclass.

"This book was simply amazing." - @justafaebookworm

After empath Tio uses violence to protect her friend from police brutality during an arrest over an electricity curfew violation, she knows her partying days are over. Avoiding drones and augmented soldiers, she goes on the run, crossing London toward the free-land of Scotland.

After hapless cynic Ruslan is told it's now illegal for people like him to go to college, he gets a mysterious message offering him a new future outside school and his petty theft side hustle. He meets an artificial intelligence offering him robotic enhancement to his body, and a job. A job helping Tio escape.

When Felicity hears that Tio needs help, she wants to do everything she can to help, even if it's a million miles from her comfortable life and against everything her parents believe in.

And when Alex comes round from unconsciousness, blind in one eye from the police beating that started it all, she just wants the whole world to burn.

They're all key players in a plan to change the world.

That plan has a name: The Panacea.

And one among them will be chosen to lead it all.


Panacea: >Build 1.0 is a genre-spanning soft science fiction fugitive thriller novel set 20 years into the future in a stagnant and decayed London, and follows a diverse BAME/BIPOC and LGBT+ group of 16 and 17 year-olds as they’re dragged into the heart of the country’s politics. Character-focused, frantic, and with a hefty emotional heart, this debut novel by author Charli Drever is full of humour and personal triumph, but also tragedy and fury.