Description de l’éditeur
Sticks and stones break bones.
Words kill.
They recruited Emily from the streets. They said it was because she's good with words.
They'll live to regret it.
Wil survived something he shouldn't have. But he doesn't remember it.
Now they're after him and he doesn't know why.
There's a word, they say. It shouldn't have got out. But it did.
And they want it back...
Find out why in one of the most mind-bending, page-turning, thrilling novels you'll ever read.
*Winner of the Aurealis Award for science fiction and GoodReads Choice Awards finalist for best science fiction*
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The fate of humanity is at stake in this ambitious satirical thriller from Australian author Barry (Machine Man). Picked off the streets of San Francisco after displaying a "natural aptitude" for persuasion, 16-year-old magician/hustler Emily Ruff joins a group of prodigies at "the Academy," where "poets" learn the magic of controlling others' minds with words. Meanwhile, hapless Wil Parke, the key player in an internal war between highly trained poets called Eliot and Woolf, is the only person known to survive the infamous "bareword" Woolf set loose in Broken Hill, Australia, two years before an event that killed thousands and wiped Wil's memory clean. Eliot believes Wil to be the only one capable of stopping this word that "can persist... like an echo," and is determined to use Wil in his quest to elucidate the word's elemental code. Emily's story and Wil's story converge in a violent denouement that amuses as much as it shocks.
