The Word Exchange

Anana Johnson has been part of the insulated bubble that grew up around the NADEL, the North American Dictionary of the English Language. When a plague of aphasia sweeps the country, Anana is caught up in both the illness and the strange events that seem to imply that the virus might not be an accident.

This book is about 1/3 too long and better in concept than execution. I think I held on to the glow of the promise of the premise, at least through the last 5 hours of the audiobook, which were a slog.

Part of the problem is that the premise is so cool and it is worked into the plot (about a missing father) in two ways:

1) Dialogue sprinkled (and sometimes sprayed) with nonsense words to simulate the aphasia virus.

2) Infodumps that pull every bit of cool information and tension out of the book.

Which isn't to say that I didn't like it. Somehow through all of that I'm left with an impression that it was a decent book.