Author: Max Barry
Title: Lexicon
Description: Early on we meet two seemingly
unconnected characters: Wil, who wakes up with people poking around in his
brain, then trying to kill him, and Emily, who is recruited to a mysterious
school where she may or may not be chosen to learn the art of persuasion. It
turns out that words are even more powerful than we ever knew, and certain
people can be trained to use them in ways so powerful they seem like magic. As
Emily tries to figure out how this works, Wil tries to escape from the “poets”
who are relentlessly pursuing him.
Plot: There are
lots of flashbacks and flash forwards, and these two characters are unrelated
until fairly late in the novel, so I was bewildered for probably at least the
first half of the book. When it all comes together, though, it’s remarkable.
Now I just need to read it again.
Characters: It’s
tough to sort out the good guys from the bad guys at first (another reason the
book is so confusing), but the characters are fascinating, and the idea of a
select few people being so persuasive they can virtually tell anyone to do
anything is not as far from reality as we might think.
Writing style: Fast-paced,
gritty, tantalizing in handing out clues to what’s going on.
Audience: It’s a
literary thriller.
Wrap-up: My top
book of 2013. Aside from being surprising, original, and dizzyingly
fast-moving, it’s just plain fun to read. 5/5*
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