Lexicon
A linguistic thriller from the creator of NationStates.
I have finished Lexicon by Max Berry and I have to say, I couldn’t put it down. That isn’t to say I loved every moment, but this was a fantastic jog through the idea of words and their effect on the human mind. There will be spoilers so if you want to avoid the spoilers; here:
TLDR; Lexicon follows two protagonists who get involved in a persuasion war of biblical proportions. The story premise: words have a greater effect on an individual than we currently believe. However, only some people have the true potential to use this effect. It is a wild ride and extremely fun. I recommend that you pick the book up at your local bookstore or wherever you are able to and read it immediately.
Now, for those of you who have read the book, or are okay with spoilers, I will delve deeper in just a minute. First, lets talk about Max Barry and how you can win a free copy of Lexicon!
Max Barry is the author of Lexicon, as well as the following novels: Syrup, Jennifer Government, Company, Machine Man, Providence, and The 22 Murders of Madison May. He is based in Australia and still writes full time. He is also the creator of online game NationStates. A cheeky government simulation and roleplaying game.
GIVEAWAY: I have a paperback copy of Lexicon I am giving away to a subscriber. You do not have to be on a paid tier. Subscribe for free and comment on this post with your favorite quote from an author. The winner will be chosen at random and announced on May 19th, 2026 on my X account. I will contact you through Substack with next steps.
A Quick Summary with My Thoughts
Lexicon has a fascinating premise I am still thinking about a week after finishing the book. Words convey meaning, and meaning is a series of chemical processes in your bran that effect emotion, logic, and your susceptibility to suggestion. Lexicon asks the question, what if you could say the right words or syllables to shutdown the layers of defense a human brain has and then slip instructions to someone and they physically obey because their brain chemistry is now under your indirect control? It play out about how you think it does. The guy who is in charge of the whole secret organization of Poets, they take on the names of mostly dead Poets as code names, ends up trying to control the world and avoid the historically repeated downfall of universal language, an event most recognizable as the Christian story of the Tower of Babel. They go through similar myths in other cultures but they colloquially refer to them as Babel events. The two main characters of the book are Emily and Wil. Well, also Harry, but he and Wil are… I will get there in a bit. Getting ahead of myself.
The book starts with Wil at an airport, he gets nabbed and his captors Eliot and Lee, say something about him being an outlier. Wil has no idea what they are talking about. Neither does the reader, and we don’t really discover what precisely it means until further long in the story. While Wil’s story is happening, we jump to Emily who is recruited into the organization, and eventually fails out of the school, and gets remanded to Broken Hill, Australia. She is given way back if she stays there, but one big problem arises. She falls in love, and it is with the one person she cannot control with her words. The outlier.
I won’t spoil the ending of the book because it is quite good and I don’t actually have much to say about it. I have a few thoughts on the overall premise though. First, Wil is established as basically the only person who can possibly solve their problem, except that Emily shows us that if they were willing to simply close their eyes and take photos, you could recreate the bareword without succumbing to it and then send in someone else to take care of the bareword. That isn’t my big ponder though. The biggest thing I think about is that, really, the stakes go away basically on page two when they confirm that Wil is the outlier. Even though Eliot seems to believe he was wrong before hand, they did in fact find the right guy. It has the same issue that Harry Potter had, which is that all stakes for the reader disappear a little bit because we know that for the book to have any kind of reasonable solution Wil is going to make it no matter what.
The book is still amazing, so it didn’t obviously detract from my experience much, but the stakes could’ve stayed higher if Wil being an outlier wasn’t revealed until later on maybe. This is all my thoughts as I sit in my upstairs room at night when I can’t sleep. I haven’t gotten a book published so what do I actually know? It was a good book and I loved it, I just thought about that the whole time too.
The biggest realization I came to at the end of the book was that Wil/Harry and Emily are exact opposites. Wil/Harry is impervious to the Poets because he lacks all innate desire. He is the epitome of go with the flow, I am just vibing mate, chill lifestyle. Emily on the other hand is nothing but unmitigated untamed roaring desire constantly. She has virtually no discipline, almost an unnatural lack of discipline, and thus the events of Lexicon take place, and they only come to a head because she fell in love with the person who was exactly the opposite of her.
All of this to say, Lexicon was a fantastic book and I cannot wait to get some of Max’s other books on my next paycheck. I will link to Max Barry things below, and also checkout the form I linked as well. Testing out some ideas and would appreciate the feedback!
Max Barry
Website - X - NationStates - Amazon Author Page - Steam Game - FB
Here is a form! Please give feedback, or ideas, or whatever it is I am asking for in this one…