Mark Lawrence has once again made me completely fall in love with a wonderful cast of characters and an intensely gripping story. One Word Kill follows Nick – a mathematical genius who learns he’s dying of cancer. Nick and his friends play Dungeons and Dragons to escape this harsh reality but when a strange man begins following Nick and brings him some dire warnings, the gang’s real life becomes crazier than they ever thought possible.

This book is a wild ride. From the very first chapter I could feel myself getting absorbed in this story and I really grew attached to Nick, Mia and the gang. The characters are so well described and I loved watching the different dynamics as they interacted with each other and I really liked seeing how things changed with the introduction of Mia to the group. Lawrence seamlessly weaves science fiction elements with worries about being able to dance at parties and it made for a really fascinating story.

The story is full of plot twists and I definitely didn’t see some of them coming. One Word Kill is multi-layered, dealing not only with Nick’s cancer treatment and the mysterious stranger, but also a dash of romance and the secrets of Mia’s past. I felt like each part of the story blended incredibly well making for a fast paced and incredibly gripping plot.

Mark Lawrence is one of my favourite authors and One Word Kill definitely wasn’t a disappointment. The story flows so well that I found myself sitting down to read a few pages and still sitting a long time later because I just had to find out what was going to happen next. Compared with some of Lawrence’s other books this one is on the shorter side and it has definitely left me itching for more in this series. If you’re a fan of Stranger Things, time travel and a rag tag bunch of kids trying to save the world, One Word Kill should definitely be next on your purchase list.

“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.”

If I'm being honest, I spent a great deal of time just staring at a blank page thinking, where to start from. There were 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...

“Of all the worlds, in all the universes, he walks into mine.”

I mean, 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 this book was simultaneously mind-blowing, level one sci-fi, beautiful, and heartbreaking. 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 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.


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.
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


Storytelling

“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.”

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.
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 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.”


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, no, 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 scared of dancing.

• 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. 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.

• 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—”


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. 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.

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 just next level!

“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.

So pick up this book because this is a must read!

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.

Nick Hayes takes the news of his imminent death pretty well, or at least as well as any fifteen-year-old boy would. With an aggressive form of leukemia, the same disease he lost his father to a few years back, he knows that he has to live in full the last few months of his life. And what would that entail? Playing D&D with his friends, of course. But when the seemingly random events of his D&D campaign start mirroring real-life situations, or vice versa, he realizes that leukemia may not be his biggest problem yet. 

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."
I was a bit reluctant to read One Word Kill. I may have enjoyed every single published work of Mark Lawrence so far, but a Science-Fiction novel was a big departure from traditional Fantasy, and a huge risk for me since I'm not a fan of the genre. But since the setting of the story is in the past as opposed to a futuristic environment, and since it has been compared to Stranger Things which I fairly enjoyed, I thought I should give it a go. I ended up reading the whole novel, start to finish, in less than three hours yesterday night. And then I read it again today, for good measure. 

I wanted to start this review by saying that this may be Mark's best work yet, but I realized I've said the exact same thing in my last 3 reviews of his books. By all accounts, Mark shouldn't be able to get better and better with every novel, since his work was perfect to begin with, but here he is, defying logic... 

Standing at 60k words, with an insane pace and and an ever-increasing momentum, One Word Kill won't let you breathe. It doesn't matter if you've never played D&D before (I have) or if you have knowledge of physics in general and of the quantum realm in particular (I haven't), this is a story worth reading. Due to its small size I'm not able to tell you more about the plot than what I've included in the blurb above without spoiling it, but I don't think I have to. What I can talk about is the other aspects of the book. 

Pace and plot I've already told you about. The book excels at everything else as well. Even if you're of a younger generation, with Mark's vivid imagery and lavish descriptions you won't have trouble adjusting to the 80s setting the story takes place in. Same goes with the physics that replace the magical aspect of a fantasy book. Mark presents and explains the many-worlds interpretation in an easy to follow way, but that doesn't mean it won't get complex enough in places to make you think your way through many problems and dilemmas the story presents later on. 

The prose combined with Mark's philosophical musings results in some quotes that will stay with you far longer than the story ever will, but I'll leave a snippet from the book to prove that to you. 

"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."
 Finally, what shines the brightest among all other aspects of the novel is the characterization. You would think that 60k words wouldn't be enough to flesh out the characters but you would be wrong. Mark managed to make me care not only about the protagonist but the other characters as well in such a way that I won't forgive him for it, given the bittersweet ending. 

All in all, One Word Kill is one of the best books I've read in my life, and I'm confident it will prove to be the same for you too.

"Ugliness multiplies, and hurt spills over into hurt, and sometimes good things are just the fuel for evil's fire"

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. This is a provisional cover and I will update the page when the official cover reveal has been made.

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 goth 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 boy's 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 adventure featuring time travel, 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.