Title: The Word Thieves
Author: Carol Riggs
Date: 2022
Publisher: Carol Riggs
ISBN: 9798849335698
Length: 387 pages
Quote: "Remember the word for your next round of taxes if you think you'll never use it again."
Miller's Law of Communication tells us, in order to understand what people think they are talking about, to assume that anything the other person says is true, and try to imagine what it could possibly be true of. In this unusual fantasy novel, the Monarch of Noviston wants to weaken the people of the Tin District--a lower-working-class neighborhood. One of his council has devised a Dark Magic way to extract words from their minds. After paying their "word taxes" people don't understand the words they've given up, if they hear those words again, and they're not able to think about what those words mean to them. People soon learn to give up words like "moist" and "bile." The word collectors, which are robot animals with alarming powers of mind control over humans, despise those words and try to trick people into handing over words like "brave.'
Stolen words? Actually a special kind of soap bubbles, photographed by Pbird at howtomeowinyiddish.bogspot.com.
There's a reason for this. In the fictive reality of the story, the words will be useful to defend Noviston against a threat nobody even in a fantasy kingdom would be likely to believe until they see it, and the Monarch is planning to sacrifice the Tinners and use their words to protect the more pleasing citizens of the posher districts.
It has been foretold that Noviston will be saved, or mostly saved, from its approaching danger by a girl. Will that girl be Taylen, a tough, thieving factory girl who's already worked her way up to quality control inspector in the dress factory? Or will it be Eliana, the princess who's spent every free minute building robot animals since she was nine or ten years old?
Taylen and Eliana, who look alike, literally bump into each other and decide, for the purposes of a secret mission Eliana has not fully explained even to herself, to switch places for three days. Naturally both of them have adventures. You know Noviston will be saved; the pleasure of reading the story is finding out how.
The Word Thieves could have been written for those who grumble about the "girl power" stories where all the girls' other talents just happen to them, as physical attractiveness does, and they only need to wait for others to notice. Taylen and Eliana are no ordinary seventeen-year-olds. They've been building their skills for years; they are the functional equivalent of 25-year-olds.
Noviston will never be the same. What happens to it could have been the plot of a Disney movie from the years when Walt and Roy Disney were still in charge. In fact, if Disney wants to try to rebuild its long-shredded reputation for wholesome entertainment that can keep the adults laughing without confusing the tiny tots, Disney might do well to make a movie of The Word Thieves.
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