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A review by sarahetc
The Word Exchange by Alena Graedon
4.0
How much do you use your cellphone? That's quantifiable. How much do you rely on your cellphone? Somewhat less quantifiable, but you could probably make a list of at least one thing that would be impossible without your cell phone, if cell phones were suddenly to vanish from existence. If they could improve your cell phone, how far would you like that to go? Would you like for it to pay for things for you, automatically? Notify you when your friends were near? Serve as your primary form of identification? Help you find that just-right word that's just out of reach? Such is the world of Anana Johnson, Alice to who friends.
Ana uses a Meme, like everybody else. Except her father, Dr. Douglas Johnson, editor of the North American Dictionary of the English Language, 3rd edition. She's an artist, but likes working for and with her father. She's recently broken up with Max, founder and CEO of Hermes, which has recently sold its blockbuster casual game Meaning Maker to worldwide communication powerhouse, Synchronic, Inc., maker of the Meme, its predecessor Aleph, and the hottest new thing, to be released in two weeks, the Nautilus, which promises to seamlessly blend user and device by converting DNA to binary and vice versa.
So when her father goes missing under deeply troubling and mysterious circumstances, Ana begins to suspect things are not always as they seem. There are strange notes and someone is keeping some pretty serious secrets. Plus, some of her best friends have had to start using their Memes to look up not just rarely used words like "obsequious" or "carapace" but for words they should really, truly know. Like "fork." And they're not just looking them up. They're paying Synchronic 9 cents a word via its Word Exchange app. Which is trying to buy the rights to the NADEL just before it goes to print.
Days before Thanksgiving, terrified that something has happened to her father, Ana recalls that they once had a conversation in case he should mysteriously disappear. The most troublesome part was that he gave her two bottles of pills, marked only with Chinese characters, with instructions that if, after he disappears, she should suffer fever, nausea, and most importantly, aphasia, to take them immediately.
So Dr. Johnson, editor of the Dictionary is gone. And Ana feels sick.
The Word Exchange was overall a fairly decent mystery. More like 4.5 stars, I might have given it five had it not read like someone from the Literary Fiction Club for Cool Kids slumming it scifi. One of the best (or worst, depending on your perspective) things about it was the number of extremely rare words used. I looked up three in the first hundred pages. But when the Word Flu finally takes hold for alternate narrator Bart, looking up words that you don't know becomes pointless. Text is skimmable at that point, because you're simply picking out the nouns and verbs you recognize from other parts of speech which are unidentifiable because what does "skish" mean? Or elucurate? They might have meanings or you might just spend the next 90 minutes looking up ten words only to have none of them actually mean anything.
There are clever references to Alice in Wonderland, and some other more obscure allusions I'll credit to Roald Dahl. And there were vast swathes that read like Snow Crash's little sister getting dressed up for the prom. So enjoyable and somewhat recommended, if you're into lexicography and scifi.
Ana uses a Meme, like everybody else. Except her father, Dr. Douglas Johnson, editor of the North American Dictionary of the English Language, 3rd edition. She's an artist, but likes working for and with her father. She's recently broken up with Max, founder and CEO of Hermes, which has recently sold its blockbuster casual game Meaning Maker to worldwide communication powerhouse, Synchronic, Inc., maker of the Meme, its predecessor Aleph, and the hottest new thing, to be released in two weeks, the Nautilus, which promises to seamlessly blend user and device by converting DNA to binary and vice versa.
So when her father goes missing under deeply troubling and mysterious circumstances, Ana begins to suspect things are not always as they seem. There are strange notes and someone is keeping some pretty serious secrets. Plus, some of her best friends have had to start using their Memes to look up not just rarely used words like "obsequious" or "carapace" but for words they should really, truly know. Like "fork." And they're not just looking them up. They're paying Synchronic 9 cents a word via its Word Exchange app. Which is trying to buy the rights to the NADEL just before it goes to print.
Days before Thanksgiving, terrified that something has happened to her father, Ana recalls that they once had a conversation in case he should mysteriously disappear. The most troublesome part was that he gave her two bottles of pills, marked only with Chinese characters, with instructions that if, after he disappears, she should suffer fever, nausea, and most importantly, aphasia, to take them immediately.
So Dr. Johnson, editor of the Dictionary is gone. And Ana feels sick.
The Word Exchange was overall a fairly decent mystery. More like 4.5 stars, I might have given it five had it not read like someone from the Literary Fiction Club for Cool Kids slumming it scifi. One of the best (or worst, depending on your perspective) things about it was the number of extremely rare words used. I looked up three in the first hundred pages. But when the Word Flu finally takes hold for alternate narrator Bart, looking up words that you don't know becomes pointless. Text is skimmable at that point, because you're simply picking out the nouns and verbs you recognize from other parts of speech which are unidentifiable because what does "skish" mean? Or elucurate? They might have meanings or you might just spend the next 90 minutes looking up ten words only to have none of them actually mean anything.
There are clever references to Alice in Wonderland, and some other more obscure allusions I'll credit to Roald Dahl. And there were vast swathes that read like Snow Crash's little sister getting dressed up for the prom. So enjoyable and somewhat recommended, if you're into lexicography and scifi.