If words are weapons, writers are assassins...

"Every story written is
marks upon a page
The same marks,
repeated, only
differently arranged"
Max Barry, Lexicon

We all know the power of words, that a rousing speech can raise the rebellion or give the hero time enough to foil the evil villain... We all know that words can take us to worlds which don't exist, create lovers and friends that we will never meet but we'll adore for the rest of our lives... We all know that words can wound. That hearts can be broken with just a sentence and that a well placed word will create scars that will never leave us...

So is it so hard to believe that there are words out there that can cut through all of our rational defenses, all the social programming, to our very cores? That there are words which make us totally vulnerable to suggestion, instruction and command?

You know that flutter in your stomach when you answer the phone and the line is silent but you know that someone is about to speak... There's your answer. We intuitively know that words have power and we also know there's not a damn thing we can do about it. We are so easy to Derren Brown.

Max Barry knows this and that's why Lexicon is so good.

Lexicon, (isbn 9781444764659), was published in June this year and I've been meaning to write a review for it ever since I raced through the proof copy a few months back. But something kept holding me back...the fact that it was so damn good.

Set in a world where a secret agency has harnessed the essence of language, identified the key personality types and the specific sounds that can hack each of our brains, this is a novel like nothing I've ever read. From the start it throws you in at the deep end and by the time you realise which way is up, you're already well out of your depth. And it's an immersive, obsessive read. I ate it greedily, spending an entire day off reading in bed with a near constant supply of tea and chocolate biscuits and there aren't many books which grip me like that - I think the last one before this was The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern and if you read this blog regularly, you'll know exactly how I feel about that book :)

But Lexicon is something different.

It is a great read, it has a compelling plot, fully fleshed characters, ingenuity and cleverness by the bucket but there's also something else...

You know that moment when you could almost believe that the X-files is an authorised government leak? That the truth is just a scrape of the surface below the unbelievable... That there's an element of truth in the horror stories which scare us...

With Lexicon there is always an undercurrent that Barry is pulling back the curtain and giving us a glimpse, not of the wizard, but of our programming. Of the way our minds perceive and comprehend language and sound, from the unspoken command of someone saying our name, the instinctual reaction of a mother to her baby's cry, to the way the hairs on the back of our neck stand up when we hear a scream in the middle of the night. A glimpse of how words and sound manipulate...

That sounds could cut through all the bullshit in our heads and leave us vulnerable...

But Lexicon takes it one step even further... What if there were a word, a phrase that could hack everyone? That there was no defense against. What if this wasn't a new word, but a forgotten word, a word that had been with us since the beginning of us grunting and gesturing at the rock, the cave, the fire... What if this word wasn't ours, what if it had come from before... What does that mean? Where does that leave us?

This is a well crafted, incredibly easy-to-read tale that behind the romp and adventure, exotic locations and death toll, behind the curtain are a lot of Big Thoughts. Note the capitals. This is linguistic philosophy masquerading as mainstream fiction. This is subtle, compelling and essentially, this is fucking clever. And not a literary fiction, big-words-and-podium clever. This is a book which knows it's readers can be smart and still like a damn good read. A book that knows you can like Kafka and Iron Man with the same brain.

This is the kind of book that every writer wishes they could write. I know I do. In an industry where some books bludgeon heavy handedly, this is a showman with an assassins blade, this is misdirection and mass entertainment. This is Derren Brown as fiction.

Now, I might be loving Lexicon too much. I might be reading too much into it... I might be selling too hard and showing you the inside of the empty top hat...

But the best thing... The thing that's really going to bake your noodle... The only way you're going to really know whether this book is everything that I say it is... The only way you can decide for yourself is to read Lexicon.

Consider yourself Derren Browned.