Max Barry

I love a good time travel or alternate dimension story and Max Barry has written a great one with The 22 Murders of Madison May. 22-year-old real estate agent, Madison May, is showing a house to a man she's never met. The man claims to be her soulmate from a parallel life. Later that day when reporter Felicity Staples is assigned to cover the murder of Madison May she finds that this is just the beginning of a series of events that will completely upend her life.

Felicity’s odd feeling show more about the murder and investigative instincts leads her to a man who is supposed to be in jail for killing his wife. The man gives her a strange object and throws her on the subway tracks. Before she knows it she wakes up in a world that is very similar, but not quite her own. Madison May is not a real estate agent in this world, but she soon winds up just as dead as the Maddie from the last world. Felicity hopes to bring some semblance of normality back to her own life and the only way she sees of doing this is by saving Madison May.

Max Barry novels are consistently thought-provoking, which continues to be the case in The 22 Murders of Madison May. Along with the ripple effects of how minor events can change the course of a world, Barry delves deep into what makes us who we are. The decisions we make and the paths our lives take. The premise and the mechanics of traveling to alternate dimensions are fascinating but it's Barry's character development that really makes this book a standout. Fans of Blake Crouch and Patrick Lee will enjoy this story.

I was provided a copy of this book by the publisher. show less

Lexicon is the rare book that I found both completely unpredictable and intensely thrilling. I’d call it a page-turner, but I listened to the audiobook version, so instead I’ll tell you that I was so enthralled that I spent the several hours just sitting on my couch listening so that I could finish it. That’s also rare – normally I only listen to audiobooks while I’m doing something else (dishes, chores, exercise, driving, etc.) – so I’d definitely call it a mark in Lexicon’s show more favor.

Fans of Lev Grossman’s The Magicians will find much to enjoy here. Like that book, Lexicon tells the story of a school for talented youngsters that involves far more sinister and heartbreaking developments than ever graced the pages of Harry Potter. However, where The Magicians passes through pitch-black satire into chilling horror, Lexicon is equal parts paranoid “wrong man” thriller and cracked coming-of-age story, with constantly shifting motivations and alliances that hammer the fact that trust is a liability.

In Lexicon’s world, language is a technology indistinguishable from magic, and the right words make it possible to control anyone as long as you know their psychological profile. A society of “poets” founded on these principles collects words of power and trains recruits in the art of persuasion at an exclusive private school. In the outside world, this society’s activities extend from brute force mental takeovers of susceptible civilians to more subtle campaigns of influence embedded in advertising or political websites.

The book jumps between two primary story lines: the kidnapping, by poets, of Will Park, a middle-mannered man who is an “outlier” unaffected by their words of power, and the recruitment, schooling and eventual downfall of a seventeen-year-old con artist named Emily Ruff who joins the poets to escape her life on the street. At first, the connection between these story-lines isn’t entirely clear, and in fact they almost feel like entirely different books. Will is living in a paranoid thriller while Emily comes of age in a young adult novel with the occasional dark moment.

However, the genius of Lexicon is the way Barry doles out revelations and slowly but surely pulls the rug out from under you. It isn’t long before the connection between Will and Emily’s stories starts to become clear, and you begin to wonder if Barry is actually doing what it seems like he is doing. Barry seems to delight in undermining expectations, and it’s oftentimes hard to know who to root for when so many of the characters take part in despicable events. Even still, I found myself drawn into their stories, wondering if my worst fears or dearest hopes might come true. I wasn’t entirely sure how the book might resolve itself until the very last moments, but that resolution didn’t feel any less earned because of it.

There is the occasional minor plot hole, and one character’s stated motivations don’t completely make sense in the end, but none of that detracted from my enjoyment. Lexicon was an absolutely thrilling read, and I can’t recommend it enough.

The funniest thing about Barry is that when I read Jennifer Government many years ago, I didn’t particularly like it. However, I’ve read two more of his books this year (Company was the other), and thoroughly enjoyed both. I suppose it just goes to show that you can’t always judge an author by a single book. I’ll definitely be checking out his other books soon. show less

I'm coming to this party VERY late. So many people have either loved this or hated it because of the hype, but honestly?

I enjoyed the effortless storytelling, the core ideas, the wonderful characters, and the deep emotion it evoked in me.

I mean, you either believe in the power of words or you don't. That's basically what separates those who love this book from those who don't... And I'm a dog person. My favorite color is green. My Facebook profile is useless for data collection because I show more filled it with nonsense... but that doesn't mean I'm not susceptible to neurolinguistic programming.

And that's what this SF thriller featuring neurolinguistic wizards is all about: persuasion. Sometimes a persuasion that has godlike levels of power. :) Of course, it's all about language. Words have all the power.

I personally would have loved to see an aspect of the tale move to the realm of how language creates consciousness, but Max Barry merely skirts the edge of that idea here. He DOES, however, remain firmly within the confines of a gloriously and deliciously evil story that not only succeeds in delivering a gut-punch of an ending but a huge body count as well.

What? Isn't this a book on words? Oh, hell yeah.

I can't see a reason why this book should not become a classic SF. It deserves to be read and re-read. Maybe if I read it enough times I can condition myself out of certain mindsets... or condition myself into another. :) I daresay the tower of Babel was never destroyed. show less

There was a period of time when I played a lot of NationStates, an Internet nation-building game. It was created by Max Berry to advertise for his novel Jennifer Government, and I suppose it worked: when I saw the book's distinctive cover in the bookstore years later, I picked it up. I wasn't disappointed: it's a satire on the rise and power of multinational corporations, taking place in a not-too-distant future where everything has been privatized down to the Police and the Government, and show more citizens take their surnames from the corporations that employ them. It's not always laugh-out-loud funny, but it did provide me with a few belly laughs, and it's almost always generally amusing. The villain, John Nike (not to be confused with his assistant, John Nike) was the source of much amusement, being alternately hilarious and despicable. The book has a flat, distant tone that works well for its emotionally distant characters in this corporate-run future, but unfortunately the tone doesn't vary as much as it needs to; the continuous use of the tone undermines the scenes that are supposed to be genuinely emotional. show less