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Lexicon

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
At an exclusive school somewhere outside of Arlington, Virginia, students aren't taught history, geography, or mathematics. Instead, they are taught to persuade. The very best will graduate as 'poets': adept wielders of language who belong to a nameless organization that is as influential as it is secretive. Whip-smart orphan Emily Ruff becomes the school's most talented prodigy until she makes a catastrophic mistake: She falls in love. Meanwhile, a seemingly innocent man named Wil Jamieson is brutally ambushed by two strange men in an airport bathroom. In order to survive, Wil must journey to the toxically decimated town of Broken Hill, Australia, to discover who he is and why an entire town was blown off the map.
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      April 8, 2013
      The fate of humanity is at stake in this ambitious satirical thriller from Australian author Barry (Machine Man). Picked off the streets of San Francisco after displaying a “natural aptitude” for persuasion, 16-year-old magician/hustler Emily Ruff joins a group of prodigies at “the Academy,” where “poets” learn the magic of controlling others’ minds with words. Meanwhile, hapless Wil Parke, the key player in an internal war between highly trained poets called Eliot and Woolf, is the only person known to survive the infamous “bareword” Woolf set loose in Broken Hill, Australia, two years before—an event that killed thousands and wiped Wil’s memory clean. Eliot believes Wil to be the only one capable of stopping this word that “can persist... like an echo,” and is determined to use Wil in his quest to elucidate the word’s elemental code. Emily’s story and Wil’s story converge in a violent denouement that amuses as much as it shocks.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Listeners may either love or hate this latest from Max Berry. Love it because of the unusual plot--centered in the present day but futuristic in concept. The story features two warring factions of "Poets," people who can control others and events with words. Listeners will also love Zach Appelman's performance of the male characters, especially that of Wil Jamison, who hails from Australia and is caught between the two factions. Once Appelman gets going, his performance is like an express train. However, listeners may hate the other main character, Emily, as played by Heather Corrigan, who makes her sound whiny and younger than the character is supposed to be. Notwithstanding the criticism, those who have patience will prevail. A.L.H. (c) AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine
    • Books+Publishing

      April 5, 2013
      The entire town of Broken Hill has been killed off by a deadly weapon: a word. And it seems as though the word is still in there. Only one man survived the attack on Broken Hill, but he doesn’t remember a thing. All Wil knows is that he’s suddenly being forced into violent situations, and that he’s supposed to believe there’s a ‘poet’ on the loose who is out to get him. This is a ‘high concept’ action-packed narrative, somewhere between Andrew McGahan’s Underground or Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, and a Hollywood thriller like Inception. There are layers of social commentary regarding privacy, surveillance, user-targeted content, and more; and there’s an overriding theme of persuasion. Words can persuade, but there are also invisible forces working behind the scenes, creating, shaping and teaching this language of persuasion. They ‘test’ words, like a company would test products or government weapons. Barry is careful, in his books, not to make the satire heavy-handed; Lexicon is a fast-paced read. It’s difficult to guess what’s going to happen, and the reader is particularly invested in a young character called Emily, who (in an almost Harry Potterlike way) is learning just how powerful the world of words can be.

      Angela Meyer is a writer, reviewer and former acting editor of Books+Publishing

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  • English

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