“An English teacher’s wet dream, “magic” words are real and knowledge of morphemes allows a person to control others.
This book was the first time I’ve seen the word “morphemes” since college. And it may be the last. Who knows?
The book was written in a way that was a bit confusing for me, but I don’t think I can really talk about it without spoiling something. It could be that the surprise is not really a surprise unless you’re of a certain density, which I most certainly am.
I will say, I think this is a great alternative for some folks out there who’ve read every thriller on the shelves. Not because I’m condemning that stuff, just because this book has good pacing and enough action to keep a thriller fan chugging along.
Throughout the book we have characters known as “Poets.” These are the folks who can manipulate others with magic words. Each poet goes to a Harry-Potter-esque school and then graduates to…well, I don’t know what exactly they’re doing. Minorly terrorizing the world? Just sort of being a secret society?
Oh, and the school really isn’t that much like Harry Potter. The thing is, goddamn you Harry Potter, whenever I see kids at a boarding school and they’re learning about anything unorthodox, I just go immediately to Harry Potter. Which is a plus for me because going to a school in Canada that taught botany would be Hogwarts for me.
Anyway, each Poet is named after a famous writer. There’s Yeats, who is a psycho. There’s Frost, who doesn’t do a whole lot. There’s a Pushkin somewhere.
I’m not sure if the Poets in the book were named after certain writers for personality reasons. It seems likely. I don’t feel like Max Barry is the kind of author who just throws stuff in here and there, although he DID publish his first book under the name “Maxx Barry” with the extra X because he thought it would be funny.
So which other writers might have been out there in Poet form, and what would that look like?
Kerouac: This dude has cred, but he’s pretty ineffective. Whenever you call him to go do some important poet-ing, he’s stoned.
Hunter S.: Stoned if you’re lucky.
R.L. Stine: Very effective against grade schoolers, especially when convincing them not to sleep the entire night because maybe there really IS a Werewolf of Fever Swamp.
Patterson: Popular, although he mostly has a guy standing next to him to do the actual saying of magic words.
Seuss: A mad Dr. who performs a lot of unnecessary surgeries. Watch out for this guy.
The Berenstains: Huge, bear-like conjoined twins. Twice the mouths, twice the danger.
C.S. Lewis: Best at tricking kids into learning about Jesus by unfair use of magic portals and swords.
“