The Lucid Books in Order

The Lucid is a short, serial science fiction thriller written by Kevin Tumlinson with Nick Thacker, and it leans hard into the what-is-happening-here energy of good end-of-the-world fiction. The setup begins close to ordinary life. Adam Bolland works at a municipal water treatment facility in Colorado Springs and mostly wants to enjoy his job, his family, and a stable routine.

Then people start acting wrong.

That is the series' first hook. Adam notices strange behavior in the people around him, including his own family, and the problem quickly feels bigger than one bad day or one local incident. The books push him from confusion into flight, as he steals vials of a mysterious chemical and goes on the run trying to figure out what is really in the water and who is behind it.

Because the series is episodic, the tension stays tight. The Lucid: Episode One works like an extended opening act, dropping Adam into a crisis he barely understands. Episode Two narrows the pressure even more. Adam is running, his family has been taken from him, and the answers he needs are still buried under somebody else's secrecy. By the time the story reaches Episode Three, the mystery has widened into a survival problem with no easy way back.

The tone sits somewhere between dystopian conspiracy thriller and early-stage apocalypse. It borrows the speed of a chase story, but the unease comes from contamination, control, and the fear that something fundamental has slipped into daily life without anyone stopping it in time. That is why the water-treatment angle works so well. It turns an invisible system into something immediately unsettling.

If you like serial suspense with a science fiction edge, The Lucid is an easy, fast read. Start with Episode One and keep going in order. The books are built to pull you forward, and the fun is watching Adam piece the truth together while the world around him keeps coming apart.