TITLE: Lexicon
AUTHOR: Max Barry
FORMAT: Hardback
PUBLISHED: 2013
Poets. No, not the type that string words together into iambic pentameter. Worse. These poets understand words and language in ways that laypeople do not. They can talk to somebody for ten minutes and understand what their segment is and know what words need said to end them entirely.
Wil Parke is a man on the run, and he doesn’t know why. He’s got total amnesia. Hell, he isn’t even sure that Wil Parke is his real name. Oh, and a poet has gone rogue and wants him dead. So two men kidnap him from the airport and spend much of the book just trying to keep his sorry ass alive.
The book flips between two story lines – one starts with Emily Ruff, who is recruited in California and becomes a poet. The other story line centers around Wil. Who is he, how can they keep him alive, and why does somebody want him?
The two stories come together in two places about as different as they can be – Broken Hill, Australia, and Washington, DC. I know I’m not doing a good job explaining this, but really, I don’t want to give things away too much, and I’m not smart enough anyway. Max Barry was a friggin’ genius with this story.
I loved the background about the poets and that setup, and a lot of the information they were sharing about words is true. So it made the book extra realistic.
That said, I saw how the two stories were going to come together about halfway to when they did. I didn’t mind, and I still enjoyed the book, but I could see how that might upset some readers a little bit. Still, I thought the book was strong enough that it didn’t matter.
Max Barry is good about making you care about his characters, so even though you’re expecting xyz, you still want to see how it plays out.
Very happy with this one. I give it 5/5.
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