#BlogTour-‘One Word Kill’ by Mark Lawrence

Many thanks to Anne Cater of Random Things for having me along on the blog tour for ‘One Word Kill’ by Mark Lawrence! Published by 47 North, this is out now in paperback wherever good books are sold.

About the book…

In January 1986, fifteen-year-old boy-genius Nick Hayes discovers
he’s dying. And it isn’t even the strangest thing to happen to him that week.

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.

A strange—yet curiously familiar—man is following Nick, with abilities that just shouldn’t exist. And this man bears a cryptic message: Mia’s in grave danger, though she doesn’t know it yet. She needs Nick’s help—now.
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.
Challenge accepted.

‘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.’ Fantasy Book Review on One Word Kill

‘an enthralling tale about people challenged by dire adversity, and isn’t that at the heart of every great story?’ The Fantasy Hive on ‘One Word Kill’.

This is a wedge of nostalgia in a book shaped package which works so well because it is not jamming retro mentions in your face every 5 seconds(take note ‘The Goldbergs’/’Stranger Things’!) It is written by an author who really understands what retro means, and someone who gets what living in the 80’s was like-riots, loan sharks, council estates, grimness and the importance of house parties as social hot spots.

The title refers to a Dungeons and Dragons scoll which gives you the opportunity to kill an opponent , the scroll then crumbles into dust which Nick’s friends pronounce ‘lame ‘ and ‘useless’ due to its lack of longevity as a prize or weapon.

However, the parrallel  message of this scroll is that one moment is all you need to win at the game and in the quest that the teens are on,this knowledge proves to be vital.

Nick is dying of leukaemia. His father was a mathematical genius who died when he was younger, his mother is struggling to cope, as is Nick, in this hospital centred world where he and the other children are being given poison in an attempt to cure them.

Holding back on telling his friends because he cannot cope with their sympathy on top of his own struggles to accept his diagnosis, Nick starts seeing the shadow of a man that isn’t there. He begins to pass in and out of time and as a reader you are left unsure whether it is the effect of his medication, or something more sinister. The shadow saves Nick and his friends from a hideous gang of bullies, and mainfests himself as someone named ‘Demus’.

Using his father’s research papers and the help of a univeristy librarian who knew his father, Nick realises that Demus is himself from the future using quantum physics to jump the various timelines. In order to survive the cancer and be alive in the future, Demus has to travel back to 1986 and ‘steal’ the memories from Nick’s friend Mia. The only way he can do this is with a microchip that is still under development by Nick’s friends, John’s father, and so , the quest begins…

This is a really well written first person narrative that captures the anxieties and worries of a young boy without being less than authentic or stereotyping him. There are some lovely set pieces when the teens are playing D+D that sweep you up in the nostalgia for a simpler time-these days 5 teens in a room would all be linked to electronic devices and facing them rather than each other.

There are slight niggles…you have the token black kid, the token fat kid, the token girl,the rich kid and it may have been better had they not been so obviously themselves, for example these were their defining features rather just a part of their whole being.

I don’t pretend to undestand all the quantum physics and grasped enough of it to make sense of the multiple timelines , but it wasn’t heavily over used nor was it a copout.

The way that things all neatly slotted into place felt neither predictable nor safe, it felt just right and is a great length to read for teens and upwards (it is recommended for 14+ due to the use of swear words).

I really enjoyed it, there were memorable characters fighting for their own identities and space to be themselves in the face of oppostion from school yard bullies, terrifying adults (Ian Rust…what a creation!)and well meaning parents. The lack of too many adults in the book really focus’ the story on the children and reflects a child’s perspective where adults are barely on the scene, they are merely passing through as adjuncts to the story.

I would definitely recommend this book, and intend to read Mark Lawrence’s other works, as soon as I get a break, this summer!

*edited to add…this is Book 1 of the ‘Impossible Times’ trilogy which I just read about when posting my review on Amazon! Book 2 ,’Limited Wish’ is out on May 28th*

About the author…

Mark Lawrence is married with four children and lives in Bristol with his family. Before becoming a writer his day job was as a research scientist focused on various rather intractable problems in the field of artificial intelligence. He has held secret level clearance with both US and UK governments. At one point he was qualified to say ‘this isn’t rocket science … oh wait, it actually is’.
He is the author of the Broken Empire trilogy (Prince of Thorns, King of Thorns and Emperor of Thorns), the Red Queen’s War trilogy (Prince of Fools, The Liar’s Key and The Wheel of Osheim) and the Book of the Ancestor series (Red Sister, Grey Sister and Holy Sister)

Links-http://www.marklawrence.buzz/

Twitter @Mark_Lawrence

@annecater