Wil Parke wakes up to find himself tortured and eventually
kidnapped by a man calling himself Tom Eliot. Tom insists
that a woman calling herself Virginia Woolf wants Wil dead
for a past that Wil can't even remember. What has Wil
forgotten that is so important to everyone? Meanwhile, a
girl named Emily Ruff passes an unusual test and enters an
academy where she is taught the value of language and how it
can change the world.
LEXICON is a bit confusing initially as the story weaves
back and forth between time and characters. The news
articles and/or internet post excerpts included at the end
of each chapter aid in creating the overall feeling that a
greater conspiracy is at work. This helps pull the tale
together as the concept is so startling that it boggles the
mind. I particularly love that the characters took the names
of poets as they create new identities after their training.
LEXICON is a cerebral thriller in which worlds wield
incredible power, including the power to destroy. I love
how Max Barry intertwines the mythology of various peoples
and the Tower of Babel into the storyline as it gives
credence to the storyline. The idea that language creates
neurological changes in the brain isn't a new one but the
ability to apply it as described in LEXICON certainly is.
Readers who want a story that challenges accepted beliefs
and asks us to look deeper at the words we so readily use
will find LEXICON both fascinating and intellectually
stimulating.
Few books are greeted with rave reviews everywhere from Time
magazine and Salon to Boingboing and io9. Yet, Max Barry’s
Lexicon is that rare thing: a thriller as high-octane as
they come, driven by a brilliant and original plot that
connects very modern questions of privacy and data
collection to centuries-old ideas about the power of
language.
At an exclusive training school at an undisclosed location
outside Washington, D.C., students are taught to control
minds, to wield words as weapons. The very best graduate as
“poets” and enter a nameless organization of unknown
purpose. Recruited off the street, whip-smart Emily Ruff
quickly learns the one key rule: never allow another person
to truly know you. Emily becomes the school’s most talented
prodigy, until she makes the catastrophic mistake of falling
in love.
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