Rating: Five out of five stars

World-Famous Three-Word Review: Words control minds.

Lexicon is about words.

More specifically, Lexicon is about the power of words.

Power as in superpower. Superpower as in mind control.

Poets are the superheroes that wield this power of words to control weaker minds. They are trained in a secret school, not unlike Dr. Charles Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters.

Best of all, they are named after famous poets like Yeats and Woolf and Elliot.

At the school, students are taught the unconventional (and borderline unethical) practice of persuasion. It isn’t long before this power is used as an increasingly destructive weapon, eventually resulting in the destruction on an entire town in rural Australia.

The story is told in alternating plot lines that reveal the past and present surrounding the two main characters, who are inextricably linked and drawn together.

Part sci-fi, part action thriller, Linguistics class — Lexicon is all smart, compelling and satisfying. The writing is clean, the characters are believable and the plot is riveting.

Author Max Barry has recently become one of my favorite writers. I’ve read each of his five novels and they’ve gotten progressively better.

One word best sums up Barry’s writing style — cool. Lexicon is another shining example of how he is able to take a possibly bland topic like linguistics and make it cool.

Just further proof that words are powerful.