An obsession to find an ancient book that many believe doesn’t exist lies at the centre of this jigsaw puzzle of a novel. Complex, intriguing and slow to build, it unfolds the mystery alongside a marriage falling apart and a deep love of books. Interestingly the publishers have made it look very like The Da Vinci Code when it’s not even a thriller. Mystery, yes, a novel of reactions and relationships, but there is no thrust of excitement. It’s more Name of the Rose than Dan Brown.
Reviewed by Sarah Broadhurst Sarah Broadhurst spent her early working life in the book trade in both retail and wholesale until the arrival of children forced her to look for freelance work she could do from… More reviews by Sarah Broadhurst
About Codex
About to depart on his first vacation in years, Edward Wozny, a hotshot young investment banker, is sent to help one of his firm's most important and mysterious clients. His task is to search their library stacks for a precious medieval codex, a treasure kept sealed away for many years and for many reasons. Enlisting the help of passionate medievalist Margaret Napier, Edward is determined to solve the mystery of the codex-to understand its significance to his wealthy clients, and to decipher the seeming parallels between the legend of the codex and an obsessive role-playing computer game that has absorbed him in the dark hours of the night. The chilling resolution brings together the medieval and the modern aspects of the plot in a twist worthy of earning comparisons to novels by William Gibson and Dan Brown, not to mention those by A. S. Byatt and Umberto Eco. Lev Grossman's Codex is a thriller of the highest order.
About to depart on his first vacation in years, Edward Wozny, a hotshot young investment banker, is sent to help one of his firm's most important and mysterious clients. His task is to search their library stacks for a precious medieval codex, a treasure kept sealed away for many years and for many reasons. Enlisting the help of passionate medievalist Margaret Napier, Edward is determined to solve the mystery of the codex-to understand its significance to his wealthy clients, and to decipher the seeming parallels between the legend of the codex and an obsessive role-playing computer game that has absorbed him in the dark hours of the night.
The chilling resolution brings together the medieval and the modern aspects of the plot in a twist worthy of earning comparisons to novels by William Gibson and Dan Brown, not to mention those by A. S. Byatt and Umberto Eco. Lev Grossman's Codex is a thriller of the highest order.
Lev Grossman is a novelist and Time magazine's book critic. A graduate of Harvard and Yale, he has written articles for the New York Times, Salon, Entertainment Weekly, Time Out New York and the Village Voice. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
About to depart on his first vacation in years, Edward Wozny, a hotshot young investment banker, is sent to help one of his firm's most important and mysterious clients. His task is to search their library stacks for a precious medieval codex, a treasure kept sealed away for many years and for many reasons.
Codex features in the following genres: Modern and Contemporary Fiction, Thriller and Suspense, eBooks of the Month, General Fiction, Fiction, Recommendations
Paperback. Not Available.
Codex was written by Lev Grossman and published by Mariner Books an imprint of HMH Books
Codex has 368 pages
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