Max Barry

Sticks and stones break bones. Words kill. They recruited Emily from the streets. They said it was because she's good with words. They'll live to regret it. Wil survived something he shouldn't have. But he doesn't remember it. Now they're after him and he doesn't know why. There's a word, they say. It shouldn't have got out. But it did. And they want it back... Find out why in one of the most mind-bending, page-turning, thrilling novels you'll ever read. *Winner of the Aurealis Award for science fiction and GoodReads Choice Awards finalist for best science fiction*

Lexicon

Lee Schneider

jacq bridge

An addictive, cerebral thriller wrapped around a heartbreaking love story that plays with some really interesting themes and contains a deeper message about language, propaganda, and control. One of my favorite reads in a long time.

Charlie Queen

Recruited into an exclusive government school where students are taught the science of coercion to support a secretive organization, orphaned street hustler Emily Ruff becomes the school's most talented prodigy before catastrophically falling in love.

John Manoogian III

The last 10-15% of this book fell apart but I loved the first 85-90%. Great writing, mostly!

Jeff James

Lexicon is the rare book that I found both completely unpredictable and intensely thrilling. I’d call it a page-turner, but I listened to the audiobook version, so instead I’ll tell you that I was so enthralled that I spent the several hours just sitting on my couch listening so that I could finish it. That’s also rare – normally I only listen to audiobooks while I’m doing something else (dishes, chores, exercise, driving, etc.) – so I’d definitely call it a mark in Lexicon’s favor.

Fans of Lev Grossman’s The Magicians will find much to enjoy here. Like that book, Lexicon tells the story of a school for talented youngsters that involves far more sinister and heartbreaking developments than ever graced the pages of Harry Potter. However, where The Magicians passes through pitch-black satire into chilling horror, Lexicon is equal parts paranoid “wrong man” thriller and cracked coming-of-age story, with constantly shifting motivations and alliances that hammer the fact that trust is a liability.

In Lexicon’s world, language is a technology indistinguishable from magic, and the right words make it possible to control anyone as long as you know their psychological profile. A society of “poets” founded on these principles collects words of power and trains recruits in the art of persuasion at an exclusive private school. In the outside world, this society’s activities extend from brute force mental takeovers of susceptible civilians to more subtle campaigns of influence embedded in advertising or political websites.

The book jumps between two primary story lines: the kidnapping, by poets, of Will Park, a middle-mannered man who is an “outlier” unaffected by their words of power, and the recruitment, schooling and eventual downfall of a seventeen-year-old con artist named Emily Ruff who joins the poets to escape her life on the street. At first, the connection between these story-lines isn’t entirely clear, and in fact they almost feel like entirely different books. Will is living in a paranoid thriller while Emily comes of age in a young adult novel with the occasional dark moment.

However, the genius of Lexicon is the way Barry doles out revelations and slowly but surely pulls the rug out from under you. It isn’t long before the connection between Will and Emily’s stories starts to become clear, and you begin to wonder if Barry is actually doing what it seems like he is doing. Barry seems to delight in undermining expectations, and it’s oftentimes hard to know who to root for when so many of the characters take part in despicable events. Even still, I found myself drawn into their stories, wondering if my worst fears or dearest hopes might come true. I wasn’t entirely sure how the book might resolve itself until the very last moments, but that resolution didn’t feel any less earned because of it.

There is the occasional minor plot hole, and one character’s stated motivations don’t completely make sense in the end, but none of that detracted from my enjoyment. Lexicon was an absolutely thrilling read, and I can’t recommend it enough.

The funniest thing about Barry is that when I read Jennifer Government many years ago, I didn’t particularly like it. However, I’ve read two more of his books this year (Company was the other), and thoroughly enjoyed both. I suppose it just goes to show that you can’t always judge an author by a single book. I’ll definitely be checking out his other books soon.

Belle

2.5 rounded down. Frustrating when the Australian characters used Americanisms that made no sense. I didn't like one of the main characters much and barely at all by the end. The other main character I liked a lot but they also changed a lot and by the end I didn't like them anymore. I also found the story wasn't compelling enough for me in the last third or so. We read this out loud but I probably wouldn't have finished it if I read it on my own. Not terrible, just not for me.

Two years ago, something terrible was unleashed in an Australian mining town of Broken Hill. Thousands died. Few people know what really happened. Emily Ruff is one of them. She belongs to an elite organisation of 'poets': masters of manipulation who use language to warp others to their will. She was one of their most promising recruits until she made a catastrophic mistake: she fell in love. Wil Parke knows the truth too, only he doesn't remember it. And he doesn't know why he's immune to the poets' powers. But he knows he needs to run. As their stories converge, the past is revealed, and the race is on for a deadly weapon: a word. Because the poets know that words can kill.

John Elbing

Not my usual read, but I liked the premise. I couldn't put it down, I got completely caught up in it.

Claudia Scully

** spoiler alert **
           The concept of this book is so cool. It could've gone so, so well. The thing that absolutely kills it for me is that there's no labelling of when things are happening. It would be so easy to just label each chapter or scene change with a date, and whose perspective it is. Because the author didn't do this, it was really hard to figure out when things were happening, and to which characters, especially at the end of the book. Each perspective and time shift could've been a new chapter. It's wild that of all the things to kill this novel for me, it was purely the organization. I feel like I missed so many major details that would've helped put the story together. 

Also, chaotic as hell to start a book with a bunch of people we don't know, a confused narrator we also don't know, a needle going into an eye that's never explained and seems to be just for shock value? The concept of being ~thrown into the action~ is fun but in my opinion it didn't pay off. 
when Emily mentioned the "star" in her eye, I was hoping that it was some allusion to that she'd also had a needle in her eye and that would be tied together somehow, but they clearly gleaned nothing from the airport bathroom needle situation. 

Completely unrelated, I still can't figure out what was so important about Broken Hill to begin with. Like why was Emily exiled there, of all places? They say someone found a bareword (v cool concept), but no one says who found it, how they found it, or where it came from. Emily steals it from that lab and takes it with her to Broken Hill after she's already been there before (per a mysterious kill order from Yeats that never gets explained or adequately foreshadowed, kind of just seems like a random detail from left field to explain her actions). but then later Yeats says "I sensed great power in Broken Hill" and I'm like?? is it because it's in the middle of nowhere? why did you have to kill a whole town?

If I'm going to roast the hell out of this book, I feel like I should also mention the things I really liked. Namely, Emily. She's great. Hell of a character. I always enjoyed her chapters/perspectives more than anyone else's. I really enjoy her backstory, her love interests, her chaos, and her connection to Eliot. I love the idea of language as a source of power. I picked this book up because I love any book about libraries or words or language as a weapon. "Compromised" is a very fun /Men in Black/ feeling sort of way. 

I think the best points in this book was realizing when characters overlapped. I liked that we realize Woolfe and Emily are the same, and that the "Big Bad" we're reading about is the other protagonist of this book. I like the reveal that Eliot and Tom are the same person. But best is that Harry and Wil are the same. 

Speaking of Wil/Harry, we do never get an answer about how he's immune to compulsion, or how magically, out of absolutely nowhere, Emily figures out a new language to compel him with (?????). We also don't understand how he can overcome the compulsion, and realize who he is, or how Emily can as well. So, Harry and Emily can eventually overcome compulsion that's been in place for years, but no one else can? seems sus. 

Overall, not a terrible book, but not one I'll recommend to my friends or to read again. Really just not my style.

Cindy Lieberman

The pen is mightier than the sword. Words can kill. The opposite of the childhood “sticks and stones” chant. In Lexicon, words persuade, influence, and even compel people to think and act in ways possibly contradictory to their nature. The two storylines in this novel often confused me (audiobook version) but I found it thought provoking and interesting.

Victoria Bartlett

Amazing. I found it best that I knew nothing about the book going into it and just let it take me on quick journey.

Luke Kanies

I loved this book. Great flow, good characters, interesting world, just enough good and evil but in general lots of mixing it up on sides and alliances. Just enough fantasy, just enough spy-type work, and just enough crazy personalities.

dead line

I don't think I connected with the message.

But it was fine.

Tyler Rodrigues

I loved this book, if you are a writer of any sort you NEED to read this book, the style, the language, the concept, the everything just phenomenal

John I. Clark

Wow, just... Wow.

One of the best books I've read in a while. So thought provoking and unusual. Loved the characters, and actually found the main premise surprisingly believable. Read it.

Lexicon

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