What if art didn’t just move you. What if it controlled you?

“A truly unique dystopia.” — Jason Pargin, bestselling author of John Dies at the End and I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom

“Mind-bending … hard to look away from.” — Publishers Weekly

“A speculative story of art as the basis of a future police state.” — Kirkus Reviews

In a shattered future where art is outlawed for some and weaponized by others, one underground painter is forced to choose: stay true to her craft, or survive.

Isobel “Izzy” Ker is one of the last Purist artists left.

She survives in the slums outside Mahl City, secretly selling illegal paintings in a world ruled by the New Art Government. They keep their citizens in line through Trigger Art, a powerful, addictive form of creation that overwhelms the senses and rewires the mind.

When her studio is raided, Izzy has nowhere to run.

She is forced to find safety with the Half-Light Rebels, a group of anti-art radicals and glorified thieves who are determined to tear the system down.

But rebellion comes at a cost, and her first mission with the rebels fails.

Izzy is captured.

The New Art Government gives her a choice: rot in the city’s infamous prison, or convert and become a Trigger Artist.

Izzy accepts and is thrust into the spotlight as a rising Trigger Artist, intoxicated by the luxury, the power, and the dangerous pull of creation at its most extreme … not to mention her enigmatic bodyguard, Rilke.

The wild, engrossing act of creating her first public piece almost makes her forget what life was like in the Dumps.

Almost.

While the system remakes her into its most powerful weapon, Izzy plays a deeper game.

She works in secret with the rebels and prepares to unveil her audacious debut piece.

Because the most dangerous creation is defiance.

Written by a rising star in science fiction, Lavender Spike is a bold, wholly original cyberpunk novel in which art is both drug and religion.