Book Review
Title: One Word Kill (Impossible Times #1)
Author: Mark Lawrence
Genre: YA/Sci-Fi
Rating: *****
Review: I haven’t really read much by Mark Lawrence but after getting into some high fantasy and some morally grey fantasy, his work has been recommended to me a lot but I wanted to start off with some smaller and a little “lighter” – if I can use that term – of his works before jumping into his other series. We are introduced to our protagonist, Nick who has just been diagnosed with cancer and from the very beginning we can sense something is off as Nick talks about being dead less than a month after the diagnosis. When he goes for his first chemotherapy treatment, he begins hallucinating as he “awakes” in his friend’s house at their Dungeons & Dragons came from the week before. These things continue to happen with Nick either losing time or seeing things that really shouldn’t be there and these events are surrounded by a single person, an eery bald man who is following Nick everywhere. This man has also had interactions with Nick’s mother although she tries to make it seem like these didn’t happen. One night, Nick’s friend John gets him to sneak out in the middle of the night with a girl called Mia where they go for a drink and to smoke a joint. All three see the mysterious man but they get spooked and flee from him at Mia’s insistence but it is Nick who surprises them despite throwing up from the chemo which they don’t know about and being in pain, he beats them both out of the park. The opening couple of chapters to One Word Kill were extremely interesting and I eager to see where the story goes.
As we approach the ¼ mark in the novel, Nick decides to keep his illness a secret from his friends for the time being and goes about his normal life, playing D&D, keeping the bullies at bay, and developing an interest in Mia. However, when Nick spots the bald man they fled from in the park outside Simon’s house, he is sure he is being followed and leaves the game early. At school, the next day he realises that his hair is beginning to fall out, but it is much earlier than the doctors said it would happen and Nick continues to experience the strangest déjà vu feelings that I have ever read about. At the next D&D meeting, Mia returns and has almost been made one of the group, but Nick has the feeling through the entire game that he has been there before. At the end of the game, he decides to come clean to his friend about his cancer and he realises their responses are identical to the vision he had a week before but he thought it was of the past when it was actually the future. Simon doesn’t take this news well and begins to freak out causing Nick to panic and flee which obviously means he runs into one of his bullies, Michael but is saved by the mysterious bald man who punches him straight in the face and when Nick asks why, he is told it is to gain his trust, although we don’t know why the man would need to gain Nick’s trust in the first place.
As we cross the ¼ mark in the novel, Nick learns the stranger’s name is Demus and he tells Nick they will meet again in a weeks’ time and gives him a sheet of paper with two things written on it; a sequence of numbers and the words “batter up”. In the meantime, he gets a visit from Mia who gives him some resin to deal with the pain and sickness but he also seems to be developing quite the attachment to her and is very concerned when she has a black eye at the next D&D game. This game is critical as John says the phrase batter up and Nick begins getting the déjà vu feeling and also ends up using the sequence of number Demus gave him to correctly call several dice rolls which is statistically improbable. Nick tries to explain that Demus gave him those number a week ago, but they don’t believe him although Mia seems to be more curious and open to the idea than the others. When Nick does meet Demus again he realises that Demus is a future and alternate version on himself that has come to Nick’s universe in order to change his own. He also explains that the déjà vu feeling and visions Nick is having are because they are close proximity and the echoes he sees will fade with time but he sees an echo of himself and Mia being chased by the school psycho, Ian Rust with a machete and is obviously scared but Demus explains the reason he has come back is for Mia because she is in danger and he needs Nick’s help in getting her to trust him.
As we approach the halfway mark in the novel, I was thoroughly invested in the story and couldn’t wait to see where it went. Nick tries to get Mia to meet Demus but things definitely don’t go according to plan when Elton informs him that Mia has got herself mixed up with some really bad guys in order to secure the drugs he asked for and he wants to make it right. At her flat he find Michael there demanding Mia open the door and after Nick kicking him and Mia hitting him with a rounders bat, he leaves but he has already called someone else to come and deal with Mia. Mia explains that this person is new in Sack’s gang and is a real psycho and he just happens to be Ian Rust, the same person Nick saw chasing them down with a machete. When Rust arrived, he pours white spirit through the letter box and both Mia and Nick have no doubts that he will light it but Mia’s mother knows how to deal with people like Rust and they are safe for the moment. By the time Nick actually gets Mia to meet Demus, she is high stung and when he explains what he is (a time traveller) he gets her to believe it but when he tells her that his purpose for being in this time is to record her memories she flees. Demus gives Nick the money that will get Mia out of Sack’s sight and he flees after her but Demus also let slip that his memories were erased and it was Mia who told him to come back to this exact time although we don’t know why yet. Mia does manage to clear her debt, but I don’t think Rust will leave them alone given what Nick and Demus have seen but I am not sure what twists this novel is going to take in the second half.
As we cross the halfway mark in the novel, Nick is struggling with chemotherapy but at the same time he figures out that Demus doesn’t just want to convince himself and Mia but their other friends as well. When they meet with Demus they find out that Mia has an accident in the future and while she recovers physically a lot of her memories are lost, which is why he wants the current Mia’s memories which will be updated every 5-10 years to give to his Mia. However, for the devices to work he needs more processing power which isn’t available in 1986 apart from a prototype chip which hasn’t been released which John’s father would have access to, so they have to break in a steal it. That is going to require the whole group as John can get his father’s access, Simon can hack into the computers and Elton can perform the physical removal of the chip but in order for that to happen they all need to be convinced that what Nick is telling them is the truth. Demus uses the Challenger explosion and knowing Elton is gay, when he hasn’t officially come out yet to do this which works perfectly. I did like the fact there was some diversity in the cast with Elton, who is a POC and queer and considering the context of the novel, 1986 was in the middle of the AIDS crisis so it would have been a really hard thing for Elton to come out during this time and it made me a little teary. With the gang onboard, Demus tells Nick that he has one week to get the chip, record Mia’s memories, and then whip his own memories of that week so they don’t change his timeline and risk the fate of his Mia.
As we approach the ¾ mark in the novel, Nick is building memories that he is going to loss in a short period of time which unless they have been reinforced in Demus will be lost forever including his first kiss with Mia. In between all these crazy things, Nick’s cancer treatment and normal teenage life, the group also have to deal with Rust several times after Mia’s mother cut him. The first is at Elton’s brothers’ 21st birthday where he corners the boys, injuring John before Elton, his brothers and his father come to their rescue, the second is even worse as he makes it clear he is after Mia but the other refuses to hand her over no matter the cost but Rust gets spooked. However, we learn shortly after that there has been a fire in Mia’s flat and her mother is now in the hospital meaning that Sack’s gang are going to be after Rust now because of the pseudo-loyalty they have for Mia’s older brother who is currently in prison. Mia’s mother basically orders Nick to keep her safe and to lay low until the police or Sack’s gang catch up with Rust and he agrees but they decides to move the heist up to that night so their Rust problem can be dealt with just like Demus promised it would be. For some strange reason I am getting conflicting feelings about the end of this novel, given the way Lawrence writes I am not sure if we will get a happy ending but I want a damn good happy ending because these characters deserve it after everything they have gone through and yet, I am aware that there are two more books in this series so it is going to end on a cliff-hanger of some sort. I did find it surprising that none of the group apart from Simon realises that Demus was Nick from the future but it does guarantee their help since they know if Demus is Nick, then doing what he says means Nick survives his cancer well into his 40’s at the very least.
As we cross into the final section of the novel, we get to see all parts of the mystery laid throughout the novel finally come together in ways that almost made me cry. While I won’t say much about the last part of One Word Kill, it was definitely an amazing read and I will be continuing with the series as soon as I can. The characters were all very well rounded and I was greatly saddened by some of the journeys they took but I was also incredibly pleased with the ending and how Lawrence ended the first instalment so perfectly. Honestly, if this is the way Mark Lawrence writes his other books then there is no doubt that I am going to love and some of these might just go on to be some very memorable books – if you got that terrible pun then you’ve read this book. Overall, One Word Kill was an exciting, heart-breaking, perfectly written, sci-fi mystery with some amazing characters and a surprising amount of diversity (sci-fi books tend to lack representation) and I can’t wait to get into the next instalment as soon as I can.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
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