Max Barry

---2026 Reread---

Nothing has changed, except I will be a better reviewer. The book still blew me away. Max Barry is a brilliant writer who grabs me by the brain and doesn't let go. The book holds up six years later. That's a lifetime in the world of technology. He perfectly satirizes modern war with advances in AI, the frightening psychology of gamification (which I hate), and the disturbing leveraging of social media influencers.

The characters are talented and smart in their roles.

Gilly show more is a good guy, diligent, always analyzing, thinking, and needing a puzzle in his life. He's perfect for Intelligence, although he can be a little slow to see all the clues. He genuinely wants to save the world. Gilly was the most sympathetic character for me, although I loved them all.

Jackson appears to be the perfect captain. She takes no nonsense but can sympathize with her crew when she needs to. She is popular because the world knows her as the survivor of a horrible incident in the war.

Anders is the least understandable pick for the crew. He's essentially a loose cannon on board an AI-powered ship where he is supposed to be responsible for weapons. He is smart enough to know that his job is to provide a nice face for what AI does. Anders bores easily and causes problems for everyone.

Talia provides the POV for the bulk of the story. She's “Life,” or the psychologist on the ship. She's probably the only person with a real job. Talia is tasked with keeping everyone sane while in deep space for four years. She's got a talent for intuiting how people are feeling and is good at keeping her genuine feelings below the surface. She is also tasked with being a pleasant face for keeping a demanding public war happy as a social media influencer. Her followers love her, and she honestly loves them.

However, as lovable and intelligent as they are, they are essentially useless when thrown against naturally evolved creatures and an artificial intelligence that doesn't care about them. The Department of Defense War is more concerned with the bottom line and increasing their share of the public pool of money every year. Some things never change. The jargon of the now and sway of public opinion are used to make them appear to change.

Any scientific problems with his tech in space are glossed over. I'm sure they are there, but the only one I noticed was the time and force that it takes to travel in the void of space. Time is such a pesky little issue for authors.

The salamander aliens are terrifying. Several points in the action scenes left me breathless, and I literally could not put this down. I still call it a best of by Barry, although it doesn't have his characteristic humor. There are light touches here and there, but there's no real comic relief like in his other books. Satire, yes. Humor, no.

---2020 Read---

I expect a lot from Max Barry. I know that when I read his books, I'm going to be blown away. So, I was not disappointed with this book. This book will be a reread at some point. I know I missed important parts—I was reading so quickly.

It's hard for me to write about books that I love because so many things have to work in unison to make me love it. I tried to work out what I loved, but it read like “blahblahblah,” so I deleted it. show less

Homeless teenager Emily Ruff is specially selected to attend a secret school because of her uncanny ability with words. She always knows the exact words to say to the right people to get what she wants - usually, their money in card tricks. She's not exactly enthusiastic until she learns that this school will teach her more of what she has already scratched the surface of - the right words used against the right personality (of 250 possible personality types) can "compromise" the person, and show more you'll be able to completely control them. To smart and independent Emily, life becomes a giant challenge. Get a person to answer some simple questions and you can pinpoint their personality type. Memorize words that will control that personality type. Don't let other people know who you are, or they can compromise you. The only rule is that students (and "poets", which they are called in their post-graduation jobs) are not allowed to fall in love, obviously, because to love someone is to allow them to know who you truly are. But Emily has never been much for following the rules.

That's not a very well-written summary because I somehow managed to make it sound really melodramatic. It's not, I swear. It's much more cerebral thriller than angst, I promise. There is true love here (not (just) teenage sexual frustration), but saving the world is always more important. It's not a perfect book - the dialog can be confusing, and some of the science doesn't add up - but the thrilling plot and thought-provoking themes more than compensate. I enjoyed it a lot. show less

I read Max Barry’s innovative, clever, exciting and violent, science fiction novel Lexicon back in 2014 and decided he’d be one of my Must Read authors. I was surprised to find that I'd let seven years slip by between 'Lexicon' and 'Providence'. So much for good intentions.

It turned out that the two books have nothing in common except that they're innovative, unexpected, violent and filled with unsettling ideas and memorable characters.

Max Barry takes on some very big themes here: truly show more alien aliens that we can't reason or bargain with because the only concepts we seem to share are the instincts to expand our territory and to destroy anything not us; sentient AIs that start off helping to fight a war and then unilaterally change the rules of engagement; and an interstellar war sustained by the clever use of social media to keep the public engaged and the tax dollars flowing. He manages to do this while delivering a tense, conflict-packed drama, that kept me turning the pages.

To me, it seemed that he did this by focusing on the four humans aboard the Providence class ship. Between them they represent complex multiple world-views that crank up the tension, drive the action and allow the big themes to be held up to the light. Surprisingly, given all that, his characters feel like real people with strengths and flaws, rather than plot concepts.

Max Barry's writing is powerful and unforgiving. He never gives his characters a free pass. Sacrifices are real and paid for in blood. Motivations are complex and change over time and sometimes make the characters hard to like. The ending is both brutal and wonderful.

It's a hard book to sum up because Max Barry isn't one for simple answers but he does ask wonderfully complex and uncompromising questions.

I recommend the audiobook version, narrated by Brittany Pressley. show less

Innovative, clever, exciting, violent, science fiction

Max Barry is now one of my "I think I'll read everything he's written" authors.

I've been reading science fiction for decades, so I know how rare it is to come across a book like "Lexicon" which has not just a new ideas, but a clever, well-thought through plot, written by someone who is skilled at dialogue, characterisation and action scenes and who can unfold the story in a way that engages the reader's intellect and emotions.

The basic show more premise of "Lexicon" is that words have the power to control how we think and behave and that this power can be shaped into a weapon by those with the right skills.

The characters constantly explain how influence and manipulation work: get someone to pay attention to the wrong thing, play on their emotions to shape their perception of good and evil, understand their personality and then pry their psyche apart. Despite this, it took me several chapters to realize that Max Barry had been manipulating me from the first page onwards.He did it by controlling the order in which I received information, who I received it from and the emotional terms used to convey it. At least twice in the novel I had to reset what I thought I knew to be true. Barry didn't cheat. All the information correctly to understand what is going on is there but my own assumptions make me see one thing and read another.

A book that is about weaponising words is likely to appeal to those of us with a recreational addiction to fiction. We KNOW words have power, so we are ripe for the ideas in this novel. If, like me, you've been trained in NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming), public speaking, influencing skills, psychometric assessment and you read tarot cards and palms as a party trick, then the early parts of this book are frighteningly familiar. The book takes what I know I can do and then asks me to imagine what a motivated person, with REAL talent, no social ties, no inhibitions and the support of an organization with generations of research at their disposal, could achieve.

"Lexicon" is filled with coercion, violence and killing from the first page. Max Barry doesn't pull his punches but he doesn't turn the violence into pornography either. He makes it too real and too repulsive for that.

His main evil-incarnate character is suitably chilling but I could write that off as stereo-type. Elliot and Emily I got to know and like and care about, so what they did, to others, to each other and to themselves had much more impact.

My only niggle with the book is the last chapter. It's not where I would have gone with this. It felt like the kind of thing Hollywood might have changed in the movie version to ensure they stayed firmly in the summer blockbuster segment. But then, I'd never have thought up something as clever and powerful as "Lexicon" in the first place, so I'll go with Barry's judgement.

I listened to "Lexicon" as an audiobook, which, I think, made the book even more exciting. Zach Appleman did a splendid job as the rugged, world-weary, Elliot. His American accents are perfect and he at least managed to sound like he'd been to Australia. Heather Corrigan was marvellous at evoking Emily's vulnerability and her strength but her attempts at Australian accents ranged from unconvincing to inappropriately hilarious. Nevertheless, both narrators kept me listening, often on the edge of my seat. show less