Lexicon

A solid sci-fi romp. I read this upon Cory Doctorow's BoingBoing recommendation, and, overall, I'm glad I picked it up. I breezed through, and generally felt that it sucked my attention and entertained me in the same way Harry Potter or The Time Traveller's Wife have. That is, this isn't necessarily a deep book, but it is a fun one.

Some bones to pick, though:

First, this book exhibits a VERY Neil Gaimany vibe. Which might be good, if you like Neil Gaiman. I don't. (At least, I didn't like American Gods.) Nothing to do with the story, it was just the... smugness? The hipness? I don't know. There's something about Gaiman - and this authorial voice has some of that too - which smacks of overconfidence. Like, yes, your ideas are good, but they're not THAT amazing.

Second: in fact, although the General Semantics-inspired “language can be so powerful that it's like magic!” idea is pretty interesting (but not mind-blowingly interesting; see above point), the section when our interesting anti-hero Emily visits the Academy felt SO. TEDIOUSLY. CLICHE. It was basically an American Harry Potter. Or Lev Grossman's The Magicians (aka a “sex and drugs and magic” high school). I liked the Boyfriend Drama plot (hey, I'll always go for that), but I didn't see anything new here. Here's an idea: why not do the magic high school in a John Hughes Pretty in Pink way? You know, James Spader as a Draco Malfoy-type bully. Or what about Ferris Bueller? Come on, people, I'm throwing out ideas here.

Third, and this is my biggest beef, is how incredibly culturally narrow this book is. The entire premise of the book rests on the assumption that English is the medium of communication. Which, yes, is true for most of the world, because English is our current lingua franca. But, OK - SPOILER HERE - the big revelation that the secret language-wizardry organization makes: “OMG, our magic is less effective when people are multilingual!” was VERY eye-rolly for me, as that basically excludes... hm... I estimate billions of people here: 1 billion for India, where the official languages are English and Hindi, even in states like Andhra Pradesh, where the local language is completely different and etymologically unrelated (Telugu). Several millions for basically all of Europe, especially places like Benelux. Or anywhere anyone speaks a dialect. Like Italy. (Yeah - WHAT ABOUT DIALECTS?) And then there's all of Africa, where people will speak their local language... plus English... plus another local language...

It was just so silly that multilinguism should have been portrayed as a revelation and magical antidote to the entire premise of their wizardry. I mean, this story takes place firmly in white America and white Australia: these two communities are pretty well-known as being stubbornly monolinguistic (all those jokes about “ugly Americans” getting angry when the local doesn't speak English well...). Move the story OUT of these two places, and into the wider world (heck, even just New Zealand - where they've got everything written in both English and Maori, for crying out loud!), and suddenly the whole plot seems to just deflate. At least, for me, because it made the “poets'” organization seem hopelessly naive. It's also surprising. Given that the “magical” words were all non-English gibberish, and based on the idea that different personalities responded - in a deep, brainy, chemical way - to different sounds in special ways, shouldn't they have been effective against everyone, regardless of language spoken? I guess not, given the whole discussion of words triggering special meanings in brains, etc.

ANYWAY. Just my $0.02.