Words are weapons.
Lexicon is a 2013 Science Fiction Thriller novel by Max Barry, also known as the author of the 2003 Dystopian novel, Jennifer Government.
An Australian man named Wil Parke finds himself in an airport bathroom with a needle in his eye. Soon, he's forced to go on the run with a mysterious man who calls himself Tom, who tells him that he has a connection to a disaster that wiped out a town of 3,000 people in Australia. To make things worse, a mysterious entity named "Wolf" is after them for something Wil has, and they need.
Elsewhere, a homeless teenage hustler named Emily Ruff is picked up off the street one day by a man in a suit. Soon after, she is accepted into a prestigious academy run by a secret organization whose members name themselves after poets. The academy specialises in teaching certain individuals how to use language to influence and persuade people. Her experiences at the academy lead to a series of catastrophes that irreparably alter the lives of people around her forever.
This novel contains examples of:
- Anachronic Order: Takes a while to catch on to, but different parts of the novel happen at different times, not concurrently. The Wil-focused chapters deal with the present day, while the Emily-focused chapters start with Emily being picked up off the street and follow her journey From Nobody to Nightmare as she becomes the Big Bad, Woolf.
- Anti-Hero: Both Wil and Emily aren't traditionally heroic. Emily becomes an Anti-Villain, while Wil becomes more heroic when he regains his memories of being Harry.
- Apocalypse How:
- Broken Hill suffered a chemical spill that triggered a Class 0, leading to the death of the entire population and its quarantine by the Australian Government. Except it wasn't a chemical spill, but Yeats using Emily to "test" the capabilities of the "bareword" on the unsuspecting townsfolk.
- According to Yeats, every time a "bareword" is discovered, it causes a Class 0, with the potential to be a Class 1 in a world where English is lingua franca.
- Attempted Rape: Lee's "test" for Emily is using a command word to force her to give him a blowjob. It doesn't work, and she punches him in the balls. He later comes back and tries again, and this time, she stabs him to death.
- Back for the Dead: Lee comes back towards the end of the novel (relatively about six months before the "present day" chapters) to attempt to rape Emily in a prison cell. Emily's response is to stab him to death with a sharpened piece of plastic. Not even Yeats seems particularly upset about it.
- Big Bad: Wolf, appropriately enough. Or so it would seem. She is in fact under the control of Yeats, the true Big Bad. Yeats wants use the "bareword" to create a new religion, so he can "make a mark" on history before he dies.
- Bittersweet Ending: Eliot dies, but Emily successfully kills Yeats, ending his megalomaniacal schemes and his breaking his power over her forever. Emily commands Harry to shoot her, but he refuses, and they try to piece their lives back together while living in rural Australia. However, the town of Broken Hill is still dead, and the organization is restructuring, implying they'll be back in some form.
- Brown Note: The "bareword". It's never described in detail, but it's essentially a symbol that, when looked at, compels the user to follow any command they are given. The disaster of Broken Hill is caused when Yeats compels Emily to write the words "KILL EVERYONE" next to the symbol, which leads the people in the hospital to go out and do just that.
- The Chessmaster: Yeats pretty much planned everything from day one.
- Cowardly Lion: Wil starts out as a straight-up coward who acts as dead weight for much of the story, but gradually takes more of an active role under the influence of Eliot. Once he gets his memories back, he sheds this completely, becoming much more capable, to Eliot's shock.
- Driving Question: What does Wolf want with Wil?
- Eye Scream: The very first page sees Wil in an airport bathroom with a needle in his eyeball.
- Foreshadowing: Quite a bit.
- Wil thinks to himself that he's "never done anything to anyone, except he once knew a girl". This "girl" turns out to be Emily.
- Emily's murder of Lee mirrors the way she ends up killing Yeats - an improvised weapon to the throat, preventing the use of command words.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: Emily was a homeless teenage girl, scamming people on the streets on San Francisco. She ended up becoming a the Big Bad, Woolf, a powerful poet who kills people on a whim. Subverted somewhat, in that Emily isn't really all that evil, but being compelled by Yeats.
- Geas: The command words taught at the academy have this effect on people. The "bareword" is a master key, capable of causing a "Babel event" that shatters a language forever. It's implied that various myths about the creation of languages, such as the Tower of Babel and Aboriginal Australian myths, are derived from the discovery of barewords.
- Groin Attack: Emily punches Lee in the balls.
- Meaningful Name:
- Eliot, named for T. S. Eliot, whose poem The Hollow Men features the line "This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper".
- Yeats, named for W. B. Yeats, whose poem The Second Coming features the line "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world / The blood dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere / The ceremony of innocence is drowned", which recalls what he does to the town of Broken Hill.
- Murder by Suicide: Raine does this to Eliot's ally at the start of the novel, using a Geas to compel him to shoot himself.
- No-Sell: At the novel's climax, Emily completely no-sells Yeats's commands and slashes his throat with a broken glass, preventing him from making any further commands.
- The Power of Love: Emily's love for Harry overrides the power of the bareword, allowing her to slip free of Yeats's control.
- Protagonist Journey to Villain: The entire novel is about Emily becoming a villain, and her subsequent redemption.
- The Stoic: Yeats, inhumanly so.
- Theme Naming: The "poets" all name themselves after poets.
- Took a Level in Badass: Harry, once he sheds his Wil persona.
- Two Aliases, One Character: This happens three times. Tom is revealed to be Eliot (as in T. S. Eliot), which is the first hint that the Emily chapters take place in the past. Then Woolf is revealed to be Emily. Finally, and most importantly, Wil Parke is revealed to be Harry Wilson, Emily's former beau.
