One Word Kill (Impossible Times, #1)

by Mark Lawrence

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Had to replace Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson to this book for the E grade prompt of the NEWTs of 2019 for Defense Against the Dark Arts and thankfully it was much better than expected.

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Despite it being for a readathon, I always wanted to read a book by Mark Lawrence and I believe that this was a nice intro to his writing style. The plot in itself is not something completely new and that’s more than fine, since Lawrence ends up filling the gaps with his explanations and fast paced action. I read many fantasies so the magic systems tend to range from very simple to very complex so it’s been a while where I read a sci-fi that is as detailed in its explanations as this one. After digging into it a bit I saw that Mark Lawrence is actually a rocket scientist, someone who has clearance to see classified informations so there’s really no reason to be surprised to see how he build up the time travel aspect of his world. It reminded me of Steins;Gate for a little bit when talking about world lines.

That aside however, the explanation does make your head turn a bit or more accurately it made mine turn a bit. The plot line doesn’t actually begin until about half way through so we’re spending the time with Nick in his treatments and with the rest of his friends whenever they meet up or have an encounter together. We do occasionally get the strange man mentioned in the synopsis, but nothing more other than a stalker vibe so having it become a major plot line later on was somewhat overwhelming at first. Thankfully, Mark Lawrence does make a remarkable job of trying to simplify it as much as possible so after a few chapters it was pretty easy to imagine.

The characters come next and a couple of them were pretty forgettable to me, I can’t recall how many times I had Elton and John jumbled in my mind and had to go back to make sure I got it right. Each of them had a certain quirk about them if you will, so seeing who I thought Elton was do what who I thought is John is capable of made me scratch my head a bit. Mia was the only girl so no chance of messing up there. Nick and Simon were pretty distinct, one for being the stronger voice throughout the narrative given he’s the main character and the other for being very different than the rest of them. I did like Simon’s mom a bit too much as well, her appearances were brief, but her personality coupled with how I imagined her made her pretty amusing.

Speaking of family, I did like that Mark Lawrence didn’t eliminate the importance of family in the book. He does make the friends have a more apparent stand with Nick, but you can see that Nick and his mother are really precious to each other. Really enjoyed that and the fact that the romance didn’t overpower the rest of the elements, for a shorter book like this one that would have been a boring tune of events in my not so humble opinion.

Lastly, I grew up in the 90s where my games were mostly digital or done outside and the PS1 was the most common go to device if I wanted to play a game inside the house, so I never actually got the chance to ever play nor learn more about Dungeons and Dragons. I believe that it’s a very fun game and I really wish that I got the chance to have played it with similar thinking people, but I guess my community never gave me that chance lol.

Final rating: 3/5