User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
Exciting TV news! https://geektyrant.com/news/the-fanta...
(the whole series is free on Kindle Unlimited - and cheap as chips on regular Kindle ($0.99 / book on Amazon.com this month. And One Word Kill is also free on Amazon Prime.)
I got an email from Mr George RR Martin this morning to let me know that he'd read One Word Kill and "enjoyed the hell out of it". #AchievementUnlockedThe One Word Kill signed and numbered special edition hardback is available from Anderida Books.
https://www.anderidabooks.co.uk/produ...-
Any of you who've looked for a Red Sister hardback recently will know this has the potential to be a sound investment and not just a lovely object!
Hurry, before they go.
My first science fiction book! The whole trilogy released during 2019.
Read about it on ThatThornGuy.com
https://thatthornguy.com/2018/06/10/o...
Join my Patreon
Join my 3-emails-a-year newsletter #prizes
.......
Rating: really liked it
I've giving One Word Kill by Mark Lawrence six stars.
Oh. You think I can't do that?
Well, yes, I can. Even if you don't see them up there.
Because while a five start book is a good solid read, one that I truly enjoy, there are some books and stories that are more than that. They are the stories that stay with you for a lifetime.
My six star stories are likely different from yours. A story gets six stars when it doesn't waste a word. It opens the door, I enter the tale, and for that time, I'm in that world. It's a story that works perfectly for me. Other examples of my six star stories would be Smith of Wooton Major by J R R Tolkien. Or the Ugly Little Boy by Isaac Asimov. These stories have nothing in common, except that they worked perfectly for me.
Anyone who has read my books may have guessed that I have a few things that utterly fascinate me. The information we carry in our blood. The nature of memory. The possibility of myriad futures. The absolute wonder of suddenly seeing the world from a different perspective. The stories we tell ourselves to make sense of the world.
Now it would be a spoiler if I told you which of those fascinations One Word Kill dances with. But I will say that it treads the measure perfectly. It's not a very long book, especially by today's standards. But it's the perfect length for the tale it tells.
Buy it. Read it.
The usual Caveat. Mark Lawrence is someone I know as a fellow writer and consider a long distance friend, even though we've never met face to face. I got this story from him for free. I also have to admit that it took me awhile to figure out how to get the file to open on my phone, and then I misplaced it on my phone for several months and didn't even read it until he asked me if I'd liked it, and reminded me that I'd told him I'd managed to put it on my phone.
The wonders of modern technology!
I don't particularly enjoy reading things on a tiny screen. But a serendipitous 14 hour power failure left me with my (luckily) fully charged phone as my only toy. I started reading, grumbling over how small the font was, and soon forgot entirely about that as I was pulled into the world and the tale.
So. My usual spoiler free review. Go find it and read it. I think you'll love it. I now need to get several real copies of this book, because I know people who will love receiving them from me.
Rating: really liked it
When you are SAD go to the BOOKSTORE and purchase this BOOK which is a fast and fun read about time travel, quantum mechanics, Dungeons & Dragons and planning a heist with your best friends because a sketchy and secretive man from the future essentially told you so...
Full disclosure though: the ending is a heartbreaker.
Rating: really liked it
3.5/5 ⭐
Full review on my Blog: The Dacian She-Wolf 🐺
I would like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to receive this ARC in exchange of an honest review! All you need to know about this book is that if you’re not a quantum mechanics genius or at least decent in maths or physics or
at least a spaceship engineer like meself (I am absolutely joking, of course, I struggle with addition on a daily basis, don't take me seriously) this book is going to make you feel dumb on a superior level. I felt highly dumb reading through this book, but I approve of my dumbness because the book enlightened me (in a very small portion because I am hopeless).
Nerdiness is a great word to describe the structure of the book. Some maths enthusiast teenagers gather to talk about time travel and play Dungeons and Dragons in the ‘80s. Come on, it sticks to it!
The characters are lovable. And I mean it. I think it is one of the most important aspects of the book. They are just so cool and witty and cute and smooshy. Love ‘em all. And the cutest of them all is Nick. Maybe it’s the fact that the story is narrated from his point of view and we have this way access to his thoughts (which are brilliant I might add), but I feel like if we were to be in any other of our characters’ minds, it would’ve been equally great.
Even though it’s short (only 200 and so pages), this book is eventful. It’s actually so packed with events that one hardly can get past a chapter without something notable even happen. Which, in my opinion, it is good. Great actually.
All is there left to say is this:
- a great, readable book;
- cancer can suck it;
- GEEK POWER!
Thanks for putting up with my shit today, read the book!
(Book-styled)
Rating: really liked it
I snagged this book so fast when it was on the Kindle First list! I mean the wonderful Mark Lawrence was kind enough to offer me a chance to read it awhile back but I don’t do pdf or mobi downloads. 😫
Anyhoo! I loved this book and it’s set in the freaking 80’s! I mean, I was born in the 70’s but the 80’s and 90’s rocked! Well, mostly......
I don’t usually like time travel books but there are a few that I love and this is one of them.
Demus explained that when you come back through time you come back just as James Cameron predicted in Terminator. Buck naked.
One Word Kill is about a bunch of cool friends that sit around playing D & D <—- I never had those kind of cool friends to play that with! Sigh...
Moving on...
One of the characters has cancer and it did make me cringe a bit as I still have some PTSD from my own cancer treatment. But I digress.
There is someone that comes from the future to help save the life of one of the kids. You think it’s the cancer patient don’t you 😉
This great group of kids go through some things, good and bad, and it’s just awesome!
I’m ready for the next one! Where is it? Good ole Mr. Lawrence can slap down another short book, ami right?! Or a long one, I will read it either way!!
Overall, a great little sci-fi book!
Happy Reading!
Mel 🖤🐶🐺🐾
Rating: really liked it
Happy birthday and welcome to the ruthless world, little book ✨ :)
One Word Kill is now out there on shelves! Or on tables getting used as a coaster for the overflowing coffee mugs...though I prefer hot dark-chocolate ☕
Just a friendly advice: Don't use it to kill flies, it's a little small, tiny, and short for that. You might find the flies are suddenly invincible 😁
999 STARS! I count it a shortcoming of Goodreads that there aren't enough stars available.
“We might live in a multiverse of infinite wonder, but we are what we are, and can only care about what falls into our own orbit.”
The paradox of this book hooked me so bad I spent a great deal of time just staring at a blank page thinking,
where to start from? There are so many platinum points in
One Word Kill that I was left trapped in a loop, with so much to say and not enough words. This book was simultaneously
mind-blowing, level one sci-fi, beautiful, and heartbreaking. “Basically, we’re all infinite.”
In truth, Mark Lawrence and Sci-Fi are one of those old couples that just belong together. Seriously. From his fantasy world of Broken Empire I knew
I the world needed a sci-fi book from him!
I was sucked into the time loop and time traveling paradox, fell in love with the characters' friendships, cheered them on when they came out, adored them when they supported eachother, and grieved their losses. All of us have a shell, a skin between us and the world that we have to break each time we speak to it. Sometimes I wished mine were thinner.
What I need is a Lawrence book with a Martinian page count—it's impressive what a bewitching tale he can weave in these few pages. And I'm always left needing more (why I binge read his other series like an addict, mind you. Yes, I'm an ML addict. There you have it)
“Of all the worlds, in all the universes, he walks into mine.”
P.S. Talk about making a famous quote better...the original Casablanca quote was, of course:
Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine. But I know that Mark Lawrence's version will probably be my new favourite quote, and one that will be sitting in my brain for a long time, at the front row—I should probably go build a cottage for it so it's comfortable there :|
I realised that just as the disease was starting to take me away from the world, I was for the first time, in a short and self-absorbed kind of life, starting to really see it for what it was. The beauty and the silliness, and how one piece fitted with the next, and how we all dance around each other in a kind of terror, too petrified of stepping on each other’s toes to understand that we are at least for a brief time getting to dance and should be enjoying the hell out of it. Storyline You hold the twenty-sided die. Weigh it.
Seventeen, you think,
it'll roll seventeen. Four pairs of eyes are glued to your hand, fingers playing with the nearly ball-shaped object. You throw it.
It's in the air.
Seventeen, it has to be seventeen.If it rolls seventeen, you survive. Any other chance...you die.
Let it be seventeen.The die hits the ground. It's rolled seventeen.
But you die anyway.“That sounds a lot like cheating...like cheating the universe!”
In London, January
1986, fifteen-year-old boy-genius Nick Hayes discovers he has cancer. He's dying, and it's not even the strangest thing to happen to him that week. Because
there's a stranger stranger following him. Knowing things he shouldn't.
We were all of us consumed by our own imagination, victims of it, haunted by impossibles, set alight by our own visions, and by other people’s. We weren’t the flamboyant artsy creatives, the darlings who would walk the boards beneath the hot eye of the spotlight, or dance, or paint, or even write novels. We were a tribe who had always felt as if we were locked into box that we couldn’t see. And when D&D came along, suddenly we saw both the box and the key.Nick and his
Dungeons & Dragons-playing friends are used to living in their imaginations. But when a new girl, Mia, joins the group and
reality becomes weirder than the fantasy world they visit in their weekly games, none of them are prepared for what comes next.
We just had to swallow the madness.“Right, so you’re going to go all James Bond, and steal the microchip from a high security Tokyo laboratory?” I laughed out loud. It was almost less feasible than time travel.
With a time traveler whispering in his ears, he finds himself in a race against time to unravel an impossible mystery and save the girl. And all that stands in his way is
a probably terminal disease, a knife-wielding maniac and the laws of physics.
What else was there to do? I’d been presented with a mystery. I could focus on that, or I could worry about leukaemia chewing its way through the marrow of my bones. No contest really.
Nobody escapes that building without sacrifice, and often the sacrifice is greater than the benefit they sought.
You speak one word and point at someone. They die. Then the scroll turns to dust. Science of the Fiction I've been obsessed with
quantum mechanics and its implications since I was 14—I'd abandon my school lessons in favour of reading books and articles about it and trying to understand them step by step (the teachers were no help, I guarantee you).
After about two years of that routine, I was seriously told off by my parents and teachers to focus on school and postpone those extra readings to when I'd entered university.
Anyways, I'm entering university this September (of 2019) and am gradually going back to deciphering texts of quantum mechanics. And this book was exactly what I needed to get in the mood :)
“Time is just a variable. We make now. Consciousness makes now. We live it and we can, with sufficient energy, move it about.”
One Word Kill focuses on the
Many Worlds Interpretation. The author puts the science of the science fiction into words very easily and you shouldn't be worried. Anything you need to know is in the book, but I'm gonna tell you a little more about it (in simple words)—it's not necessary to read this but it's
fascinating. I'll put in spoiler tags even though it's
not a spoiler: (view spoiler)
[
Some quantum physicists believe that time results from two quantum particles (elementary particles) being “entangled” with each other. Like when we observe a particle, we are being entangled with it and so time emerges as a result of our interaction. But other physicists believe that there is no difference in a particle before and after it'is observed. There's simply different possibilities to how the particles entangle, and all the possibilities exist in parallel universes.—the Many Worlds Interpretation.
Now in trying to unfiy these implications of time in quantum mechanics with that of general relativity, time ended up disappearing from equations, suggesting that time does not exist at all. (hide spoiler)]“If it’s true...what he says...”
“It makes you wonder what you can be sure of anymore. If anything is certain. What really matters.”
The gist of it: the idea of Many Worlds Interpretation is that when you roll a six-sided dice, your reality branches and
all the six possibilities happen. In one reality the dice rolls one, in another two, and so on. And time, as a result of quantum mechanics, shows itself to be nonexistent and an
illusion. So it is no longer an arrow that goes only forward and can't be moved about.
“The equations that govern the universe don’t care about ‘now’. You can ask them questions about this time or that time, but nowhere in the elegance of their mathematics is there any such thing as ‘now’. The idea of one specific moment, one universal ‘now’ racing along at sixty minutes an hour, slicing through the seconds, spitting the past out behind it and throwing itself into the future...that’s just an artefact of consciousness, something entirely of our own making that the cosmos has no use for.” Storytelling A creature made of failures, of old cruelties, of stillborn children, missed chances, soured wounds. It spoke a language of pain, sewn from torture chamber screams and widows’ weeping for lost lovers.
Mark Lawrence is a master storyteller, a weaver of tales, the man who I'd huddle around the fire in the coldest of nights to listen to, until dawn breaks and the blessed darkness flees. He can make you feel a thousand things after another, he can make you care with one sentence and break you with one word—one word kill indeed.
“I mean, it’s not awful or anything. I guess I just expected more from tobacco than it had to give... There’s a lesson somewhere in there for you.”
And never forget his wit or
hilarious writing! I would laugh and laugh until the occupants of the house and even the neighbours considered taking me to a mental asylum. He'd also sneak little lessons of friendship and living into his story, and he'd
raise tropes to break them apart, tear them into pieces:
“They’ll talk about this as ‘saving Mia’.” He shrugged. “Let them. But you, you need to remember this: she saves you. In the end, she saves you. You’re not rescuing a damsel in distress here. You’re returning a favour in advance.” Cancer & Pain The Oxford English Dictionary tells us that cancer is a noun and advises on pronunciation before declaring it a disease caused by an uncontrolled division of abnormal cells within the body. Put like that it doesn’t sound too scary. Then it spoils the effect by noting the Greek root, karkinos, crab, said to have arisen from the swollen veins radiating from tumours that gave the impression of the many limbs of a crab.
At least they didn’t name it after spiders. If I was going to be eaten alive, and I in no way wished to be, let it be by a crab rather than a spider.
Now, this isn't a cancer book. Yes the MC has cancer. Yes we spend 4 or 5 scenes in the hospital. Yes, we read his fears hopes and acceptance. But this has a different outlook on it—and a perfect one. Mark Lawrence
beautifully captures the essence of disease and how it might affect our view of life.Yes, he gets the truth of cancer raw on the page (my very dear grandfather who I love with all my heart has cancer, and we've been with him every step of the way, so I say that with certainty) but his words will hit you whatever type of pain you've seen or experienced.
That, of course, does not surprise me. As
a dedicated and loving father with a disabled daughter, I'm sure Mr. Lawrence understands pain deeply, and I wish for nothing more than steadfast strength, patience, contentment and a loving life for both him and his precious girl Celyn :)
In hospital they ask you to rate your discomfort on a scale of ten. I guess it’s the best they can come up with, but it fails to capture the nature of the beast. Pain can stay the same while you change around it. And like a thumb of constant size, what it blocks out depends on how close it gets to you. At arm’s length a thumb obscures a small fragment of the day. Held close enough to your eye, and it can blind you to everything that matters, relegating the world to a periphery. Characterization Meet the 5 main aka the gang ⤵
Nick: aka
the smart kid; has a deceased relatively famous mathematician father—or as famous as any mathematician not named Einstein can get—who
died of cancer died
with cancer but of being crushed by a train. Not pleasant, you might say, but he at least got “cured” of his cancer *shrugs*. With him, Mark Lawrence perfectly captures
the feeling of invincibility in the young (myself included). He's a genius who tries not to declare that he's a genius. Is also scared of dancing.
In general, I found other people to be a far greater mystery than, say, integral calculus, which my friends at school assured me was supposed to be difficult.
Mia: aka
the cool kid; has
escaped a church school pursued by nuns, got a brother in jail, is deep in contact with the
London criminal underworld. Absolutely amazing. You don't wanna get on her bad side, cause while she might get punched in the eye, she'll leave
you bloodied on the ground. Warned ya!
Elton: aka
the ninja kid; has too many brothers and an amazing and inspiring dad. A family of martial arts masters.
Coloured. (view spoiler)
[Gay (hide spoiler)]. Hilarious and one of a kind.
Unmatched actor and storyteller. The game master. Very not up to doing criminal related stuff, doesn't believe in time travel.
“So far, we’ve just been trespassing. Now we’re breaking and entering. That’s what the charge will be. And if we come out with something that’s not ours, that’s burglary. Just so we’re clear.”
Simon: aka
the calc kid; not wired like regular people, emotions go above his head. Not great with change. Very precious. Adorable. Petrified of dancing and parties. A
human calculator that could
come up with a number like four million one hundred and forty-seven thousand two hundred, not even considering the calculations and
speed. Sure peace of cake, right?
John: aka
the rich kid; very charming, supposedly confident but also very self-conscious, takes centuries to get ready for a party and dances terribly (but don't tell him that) 😂 in summary, he's more than he seems at first glance, so no judging! Specially not for having
a racist mother!
This
never fails to make me howl with laughter 😂 ⤵
The last call came when he was half an hour late.
“I’m leaving! I’m leaving!”
“You’re back at your house?”
“No, I’m leaving. Pay attention.”
“Leaving your house?”
“I'm heading for the door. The phone cord won’t stretch much further! Cover your ears. When it pings back it’s going to make a hell of a—”
Simon's mum: not of the main 5 but I just had to mention her because
damn I need her in my life. The
complete opposite of Simon—the closest he can come to swearing is “damnation”, but his mum can make sailors blush!
Golden moment which'll make you realise what I'm talking about (note that Simon's straight 😂):
“Fuck me sideways!”
“Mum!” Simon’s protest went unheeded.
“It’s like a stately home. In Richmond.” Simon’s mum gawped without shame. “Go on then. And Simon, if there’s even the slightest chance he’s gay, make sure you marry him!”
Relationships Complicated friendships have always been something I've considered to be one of Mark Lawrence's specialities and strongest points. He has a way of
subtly building a strong bond and making you feel it in your bones. I have felt and seen that in every single one of his books—between murderers and honourable men alike.
Now trying his hand with teenagers of the 1980s, Mark has done it again :) One of the reasons this review was so hard for me to write was exactly that—(view spoiler)
[or more specifically, the loss of Elton's friendship, which was so tragic and I just :'( I can't talk about it...
Unsaid words have always been a weakness of mine. The things you'd never to say. The words they'd never get to hear. And to think that he'll never get to tell him the things he didn't know and his choice to not sacrifice anyone... (hide spoiler)]Suffice it to say, Mark made me care so deeply about their friendship in such few words that I felt any small crack in their bonds in my heart.
I call that a masterpiece of relationship building. She made me feel like I was part of something, part of the world, not just skating around the edges, too tied up in myself to join in.
Now what I didn't expect was
the brewing romance—and oh did I love it... To be honest, in both The Broken Empire or Red Queen's War series, the romance was always a subtle background presence that was felt in different ways and on different levels by the characters; and while I loved it and treasured it in those books, this was so exquisite and unforgettable, and man I had no idea how I'd been missing Mark Lawrence's delicate romance in my life.
“I don’t know what love is. I think that’s something I’ve just started learning about. I know how it starts though. It seems that it grows and changes, and changes you, too. I hope it makes us better. I...I’m not saying this very well...but I think I’m going to grow into a man who could love the woman you’re going to grow into...”*grabs a tissue, turns away, sniffles, loudly, cleans tears, sniffles a little more, turns back* where was I?? Oh, I was talking about
how rare it is to find a romance so well written, unpretentious, and real in a book, YA or Adult. I'd move Mark Lawrence higher on my favourite authors list if he wasn't already sitting on second place after George R.R. Martin. So there you go.
“That’s it?” I frowned. I had hoped for some deeper wisdom that might help me unravel the conundrums of infinitely many universes and man’s relationship with time and memory.
Now don't panic—and open your eyes.
You might find an advice you deem small might be the truest of them all. I can only tell you this: read this book—you won't regret it!
Many thanks to Mark Lawrence for generously providing me with an ARC of One Word Kill through NetGalley :) Companions Book playlist: [ Spotify LINK to series playlist ]
• “Dream Is Collapsing” by Hans Zimmer (main song, suspenseful, D&D, breaking and entering)
• “Allow Me” by Kilgore (funny/gathering scenes)
• “Carry You” by Ruelle & Fleurie (emotional/touching moments, in hospital, the end, friendship scenes)
• “Daydream” by Ruelle (mysterious, suspenseful, dabbling in time)
Rating: really liked it
I received an uncorrected proof copy of One Word Kill in exchange for an honest review. I would like to thank Mark Lawrence and 47North for approaching me to read this early.
Starting on the 8th January 1986, Nick a gangly 15-year-old who is extremely intelligent is diagnosed with leukaemia. The doctors advise that he may only have up to 5 years to live. In the local hospital, he goes through Chemotherapy and shares a children's ward with many other suffering youths as they weaken and essentially fade from health and normality. He has to visit the hospital weekly yet when he is not there he is living the life of a normalish geeky teenager. Going to school, dealing with bullies, scared to talk to girls but what he looks forward to the most is the weekly D&D meet-ups he has with his best friends. They can forget about the monotony and hardships real-life presents and lose themselves in a fantastical adventure where their imagination is the only limitation. When he is playing, even Nick forgets about what ails him. It all seems pretty straightforward until intense deja-vu affects the protagonist, a shadowy stranger starts stalking him, certain events that happen in their sessions are scarily close to some real-life events and what's even scarier than all is that a young lady has joined the group's D&D party!
It's no secret that in my humble opinion Mark Lawrence is one of the finest and most consistent fantasy authors currently writing. By profession, Lawrence is actually a scientist so it seemed like only a matter of time before he made the foray into the science fiction genre. This is completely unlike anything Lawrence has published before. This isn't like any science fiction stories I've read previously and for all the elements of time travel, parallel universes, complex mathematics and quantum mechanics, it features drug dealers, local psychopaths and the D&D group trying to learn how to dance to impress the ladies. It's a peculiar mix but I'm happy to say it works expertly.
The story is presented through Nick's first-person perspective and he is a very likeable character who is a joy to follow. The accompanying cast is surprisingly deep and well fleshed out to say that this is quite a short book. I'd estimate it's approximately 90,000 words. In addition to Nick, My favourite characters were Mia, the goth girl who joins the boys games, Elton, who adores his kung-fu practising, and John, the cool dude who loves D&D but doesn't mention it to any of his school friends. Also, a character called Demus who I will say nothing about but who is hugely important and influential to the overall narrative and progression of the tale.
It is difficult to summarise and this probably won't be accurate enough but this is the best I can come up with. This seemed like a mix of Stranger Things, Donnie Darko, the Xbox game Alan Wake mixed with the youthful antics and awkwardness seen in comedy shows The Inbetweeners and The Big Bang Theory. Some of the scientific language written does come across occasionally as confusing and very hi-tech and knowing Mark's profession I imagine it's all legit and accurate. Although the story is complex, multi-layered, unpredictable and ultimately enduring it wasn't too difficult for me to follow as Lawrence is an excellent writer. The writing is sometimes intoxicating and addictive however surreal and bizarre certain events may be and I loved the humourous flow and banter between the friends. Mark's prose is poetic and sometimes, in a good way, hypnotising. I read One Word Kill within 24 hours and it was all I could think about to the extent where I dreamt about the shadowy character who stalks Nick!
The world building is admirable whether describing the suburbs in London, a friend's council flat or describing the London underground service. There are lots of brilliant references to the mid-80's such as the fact Back to the Future had just been released, kids play on their Commodore 64's and that everyone believes Hoverboards will be the obvious invention that the future will present. I really enjoyed, and I bet Mark enjoyed writing the descriptions of the D&D ventures. These sections are closer to what he has written before but with more humour, teenagers innocence and tropes including typical creatures like orcs, vampires, mages, clerics, warriors that will probably prompt a sense of nostalgia for his readers and the target audience. I regret that I've never played D&D. :(
This is not released until April 2019 but already in August 2018, this is one of the finest uncorrected proofs I have ever read. I did not notice a single error which is exceptional and shows the hard work Mark, Agnes and 47North have put into this tale. This works perfectly as a standalone. The ending is absolutely spectacular and wraps everything up perfectly. I loved the setting, the protagonist, the characters including the supporting and very minor players, the thrills and spills and emotions. To be honest, the very minor and possible negative that I have is that some of the terminologies threw me off balance very occasionally. 47North enjoyed this book so much they asked Lawrence to turn it into a trilogy of which all the books will be released in 2019. A note to his current fans, although a few scenes are dark and gruesome this is very different to his previous works. An exceptional time-travel adventure featuring a gang of geeks that's cleverly composed, thrilling and will hopefully aid Lawrence's to rise to the top of the game in another genre. I loved it.
Rating: really liked it
This is the first book in a very cool, fast-paced time travel SF trilogy that mixes 1980’s Dungeons and Dragons (with a British teenage cast) + cancer + time travel/multi-universe aspect. This first book is $1.99 on Kindle, at least right now. Review first posted on Fantasy Literature (in a different, collaborative form, with a couple of my co-reviewers at FanLit).
Nick, the 15 year old narrator of the story and a math genius, who's a wizard named Nicodemus in his D&D games, finds out that he has leukaemia right at the start of the story. His group of D&D-playing friends sticks behind him, including the girl, Mia, who recently joined the group. She's probably too cool for the nerdy Nick, but he's still interested in her. :) Nick also has a couple of pretty scary enemies from his school: the bully Michael Devis and the even more vicious Ian Rust.
One day, while Devis is picking on Nick, an older, balding man named Demus (hmmm) appears out of nowhere to slug Michael Devis in the mouth just as Devis is about to empty Nick’s backpack into a pool of vomit. Demus looks strangely familiar to Nick, and the reader figures out why pretty quickly (the clues aren’t exactly subtle). Soon Demus is explaining time travel to Nick, setting out a rationale for it in quantum mechanics, and giving Nick puzzles to solve to make his future ― and, significantly, Mia’s ― possible.
Things grow ominous when Ian Rust is expelled from school and takes up with a local drug dealer to whom Mia owes a debt. Demus makes things even more difficult by asking for a piece of technology that doesn’t exist except as a highly-secured prototype in Nick’s time.
I found the plot intriguing (I have to say I'm a fan of time travel tales and strongly predisposed to approve of them). Mark Lawrence’s writing style is also a noticeable step up from the usual:
A decade seemed like forever, and it would take three of them just to reach the age my mother was right now. Cancer had closed that down. Like the big C, curling in on itself, my view of the future had narrowed to tunnel vision, aimed squarely at the next week, next month … would I have a next year? I was carrying not only the burden of my sickness but the pressure of making something worthwhile of each day now that my towering stack of them had fallen into ruin and left me clutching at each hour as it slipped between my fingers.
The characters also appealed to me (well, except for the psychopathic Rust, with the “hole in his mind that needed to be filled with other people’s pain”) and the plot kept me engaged and interested.
When all was said and done, though, the motivation for Demus’ trip to the past seems clearly insufficient, given the high price that Demus knows it will cost. To say more would get us into spoiler territory, but perhaps the next book will clarify why it was so vitally necessary. As it currently stands, it was a big enough plot hole for me to knock down my rating by a star, especially when combined with too many logical questions being sidestepped with the rationale that Demus has to take certain actions simply because that’s the way it happened before.
Lawrence’s choice of “One Word Kill” as the title of this novel plays out in at least a couple of ways. A key point in a couple of the characters’ D&D games is a spell named “Power Word Kill”; Nick points out how “lame” he thinks this spell is because with every other bad thing that happens, there’s some chance, however small, that you can escape. But with Power Word Kill, there’s no chance at all to escape the spell if it’s cast at you. That same sense of inexorable death looms over Nick personally because of that “one word” every human dreads to hear: “Cancer.” But perhaps there’s a narrow way out for Nick after all…
The next book, Limited Wish, has just been released. It takes the plot in some interesting new directions!
I received a free review copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley. Thank you!
Rating: really liked it
Back to the 80sA great book that hit all the right cords. It is heart wrenching in places and nostalgia in others with likeable characters that I could not help cheer for.
The book starts with the world's worst gut punch possible. The story is great mixture of emotions and scifi. The nostalgia of the story for me is the era the book is set in, 1985 as well as the places and landmarks. It is a great reminder of how far we have come technologically since then. How life was before the internet and mobile phones.
I was not sure I would like this book as youngers with terminal disease is usually a turn off for me. Though the story of the human coping mechanism and a little help from friends, the bonds formed, and possible the likeliest band of heroes since the Goonies.
This is a great read and a trip down memory lane for any one growing in the 80s London. From places to peoples technology and tolerances. I would definitely like to know what happens next.
Rating: really liked it
Mark Lawrence, you continue to surprise me, and in the best possible way.
One Word Kill is quite a departure for Lawrence, who is best known for his excellent grimdark fantasy.
One Word Kill, on the other hand, is a sci-fi infused bildungsroman taking place in London in 1986. The first-person narrator, Nick, is a 15-year-old boy who has just been diagnosed with leukemia. He has, at best, a 50% chance of surviving to his 20th birthday.
Nick is a mathematical prodigy and a social outcast with a small circle of close friends who love playing Dungeons & Dragons and discussing the metaphysical implications of quantum mechanics. The sci-fi elements come when Nick is approached by a visitor from the future with an important message that could rescue him from his cancer, but more importantly for Nick, save his troubled new friend, Mia.
This book is classified as Young Adult, which is an accurate description. However, there is so much here for an adult audience to love.
One Word Kill is full of 1980s nostalgia, with plenty of references to the classic board games, television shows, movies, and music of the era. Payphones? They still got payphones. The references to political, social, and technological events of the era certainly bring back memories. As the characters watched the explosion of the
Challenger space shuttle, I was brought back to my own experience of watching the disaster on live TV during elementary school, not comprehending what I was seeing.
As with Mark Lawrence's fantasy novels,
One World Kill is hyperintelligent and masterfully written. The more I read from Mark Lawrence, the more he reminds me of a grimdark David Mitchell. Like Mitchell, Mark Lawrence can so convincingly get in the minds of his characters and bring out their most authentic, natural voices. Mark Lawrence also seems to be constructing some grand universe for all of his various novels, much like David Mitchell is doing across his novels (which didn't become apparent, at least to me, until his fantastic masterpiece,
The Bone Clocks). Personally, I see
One Word Kill as the Mark Lawrence analogue to David Mitchell's
Black Swan Green, another brilliant bildungsroman of a teenaged boy in 1980s working class England.
Mark Lawrence's writing is superb, as always. He brings out Nick's voice perfectly, accurately capturing the mind of a boy growing up in the 1980s. The prose is polished and concise, with every word carefully chosen. As with Lawrence's other books, there is no filler here. To give you a sense of the writing, let me quote Nick's description of his first chemotherapy treatment in the children's oncology ward:
These kids behaved like old men and women, lying exhausted in their beds, eyes bright in dark hollows. When they looked at you it didn't take much imagination to see the skull beneath the skin.
They had us arranged by length in treatment so the ward looked rather like an assembly line, taking in healthy children at one end and spitting out corpses at the other.This novel strikes a good balance between stimulating the reader's mind and heart. The way Nick handles his cancer diagnosis and chemotherapy, and the subsequent interactions with his friends, are simultaneously heartbreaking and heartwarming. As a scientist, I also loved the discussions of quantum mechanics and the implications of its many-worlds interpretation.
This novel was such a pleasant surprise. Highly recommended.
Rating: really liked it
I’m well aware that I ramble too much about three topics in particular: time travel, quantum mechanics, and the universe(s). All of my friends have been victims of my drawn-out reflections on the yummiest food for thought the world has to offer. On multiple occasions. So
One Word Kill feels like a guilty pleasure for me. Pure, unadulterated nerdiness.
Nick Hayes, boygenius and devoted Dungeons and Dragons player, is diagnosed with leukemia. Within days, he sees a mysterious man following him. His name is Demus and he claims to be a time traveler from the future. He doesn’t seem to be lying; he knows things he couldn’t possibly know. And he says that Mia, Nick’s friend, is in danger.
This is how you write about time travel properly, without forcing me to suspend my disbelief.
This book is a twist on the infamous many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. This is contested, but my basic understanding is that the wavefunction doesn’t collapse, it chooses every possible state, and the branches created by each choice are new “parallel worlds,” if you will. Macrolevel multiversal mayhem! In this context, if you were to become a time traveler, you wouldn’t be traveling back in time in your own “world.” There are branches where you never discovered time travel, where you never time traveled. (Is there a synonym for time travel? Thesaurus, please help me.) The branch you traveled to is not your past. By traveling back in time, you opened a new “world.” Therefore, you could assassinate any tyrant you wanted and it wouldn’t have any effect on the people you’re probably trying to save. If you knew someone who got into a car crash, meddling with transtemporal (ha!) business would not save them. Sure, you might be able to save another version of that person, but the one you knew and loved still got into that crash no matter what.
This is different from how I had thought of time travel before: as a sort of loop. If you traveled back in time and interacted with your past self, they could presumably grow up to follow in your footsteps and travel back to their younger self, continuing the loop. Enter: the lovely bootstrap paradox! Ah, causality. (There are no words in the English language I could use to make the whole “talking with yourself at different ages” thing clearer in terms of pronouns, I’m sorry.)
What makes Demus different is that Nick, the narrator, is his past self. This opens a realm of possibilities and paradoxes. Mark handles the numerous implications of this unconventional situation masterfully. There were many times when I went, “Oh, but what about
this,” only to read the next page and find an explanation. There may be a loop, but there are no holes. Reading such a carefully crafted and unabashedly scientific interpretation of time travel in a novel was thoroughly satisfying.
I understand that this book won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. It’s written very clearly and concisely and the characters leap off the page, but it’s still a bit of a niche geek-out and can be difficult to wrap your head around, especially if you aren’t interested in the subject in the first place. But for someone who has problems shutting up about the implications of quantum time travel,
One Word Kill was a gift from the sci-fi gods. I devoured it.
5 stars
Rating: really liked it
I absolutely loved this book. A fantastic sci-fi reminding me of Stranger Things and the time-bending concepts of the Terminator. I was a teenager through the 1980’s and I loved the sense of nostalgia Mark’s story evoked. It’s a rollercoaster of adventure, wrapped up in nuanced characters and a tight, twisty plot. This is a book that gripped me and didn’t let go until the last page. It’s everything that I look for in a book, and like the best of reads one that has stayed with long after I finished it.
Highly recommended.
Rating: really liked it
3,5* - "Ready Player One meets Stranger Things" is one of the biggest lies I've ever heard. Nothing about this is Ready Player One and the only Stranger Things resemblance is that it takes place in the 1980's (and maybe the playing of D&D).
Still, I enjoyed this one quite a bit. It's kinda full of cliches and the story isn't very original either, but it was fun and entertaining nonetheless.
I really hope for a bit more character depth in the sequels though.
Rating: really liked it
My one line review:
"I clapped after reading the last line. Don’t know if that’s ever happened before."
I'm content to leave this review as simple as that, but I owe it to NetGalley and other potential readers to provide a bit more information. I do think it's best that you go into this story completely blind -- Mark Lawrence has earned enough trust where I don't have to read an advance blurb to know that his stories are'worth reading. That being said, I'll provide a few minor plot spoilers below, and try to only touch on overall themes, instead of major plot points.
The story is set in London during the 1980's, and focuses on unpopular teenager Nick who was just diagonsed with leukemia. Nick has a small group of friends that meet on weekends for Dungeons and Dragons, and we get to experience some wonderful role-playing sessions with some talented players. (I was especially nostalgic during these scenes, as I spent many a weekend in a similar position.). Nick and some other members of his group have exceptionally brilliant minds -- one has a brain that can solve computations in seconds, while Nick himself is a student of advanced quantum theory. Somehow, Lawrence combines cancer, D&D, and quantum mechanics into a complex story that highlights the bonds of friendship, pushes the boundaries of physics, and is also somehow a sweet and heart-wrenching love story. (Go ahead and pre-order now, I'll wait.)
Lawrence has some wondeful tricks up his sleeve that underlines his exceptional writing talent. There's a jaw-dropping reveal on page one that stuck in the back of my mind throughout the entire book, and how that revelation comes to fruition is as sneaky and unexpected as it is brilliant. The book isn't that long, and its pace invites the reader to fly through it in very few reading sessions. I encourage you to try and savor it for as long as possible, as it is over much too soon. Although it is the start of a trilogy, there is a definitive and wondefully satisfying ending. (It also offers some sound and applicable life advice, which has had me smiling ever since.)
Great characters. Unique story. A setting that takes full advantage of what it has to offer, and a memorable ending that left me waiting impatiently for the next entry. This story is (quite literally) filled with infinite possibilities, and I'm damn excited to see what else Lawrence has in store.
Rating: really liked it
One Word Kill by Mark Lawrence and narrated by Matthew Frow is an awesome fantasy that also mixed heavy real world subjects into the plot. The main character is a teen that plays D&D with friends, has a crush on a girl, deals with a wicked bully, and just got diagnosed with cancer. Then he sees a guy following him around, then protecting him, then predicting the future. It really gets wild! So much happens with each of the items or issues of his life. This is so unpredictable and totally awesome! I didn't see most of this coming! A wild ride!
The narrator was terrific in keeping all the voices separate and distinct. Well done!
