Codex

by Lev Grossman

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 015602859X
• ISBN13: 9780156028592
• Release Date: May 2005
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 348 Pages
• Weight: 0.81 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

not what I expected

I assume this has something to do with the bible and it had a tag on the back that said Goodwill $.99 what a big ripoff I paid a lot more, and won't do this again, and see no place to return it

A Great Read!

Codex is fast moving and well plotted with a sub-plot I have never encountered before on video gaming. Very cool! The rare book milieu is full of arcane details and facts. It is a world seldom seen and worth entering. A good read. I totally enjoyed it.

Intelligent, Gripping, and Entertaining

I have been searching for an acceptable follow-up to the DaVinci Code, and I found that Codex surpassed it. Codex is written with both a wry sense of humor and an indepth historical knowledge of books that provide for a unique, daring story. Lev Grossman deftly propels you through the protagonist's intellectual twist and turns, taking the reader along on a complicated but thoroughly enjoyable journey. It was a fabulous read for those that like some spark and originality with their mysteries.

Smart Thrills

Codex left me feeling the way the Knicks of the late nineties did: delivering thrills and chills just when you thought it was all over. Like a Larry Johnson four-point play, this one kept me jumping out of my seat until the final buzzer, or, in the book's case, the final page. Grossman's book is a brief history of both bookmaking and medieval literary technique cleverly hidden within the covers of a thriller (or the other way around) that knows that smarts is only half the game. Unlike some other bibliomaniac thrillers, this one knows just when to call off class for a beautiful spring day, or, a pulse-quickening chase down the streets of Brooklyn. The author's hand is sure, but that doesn't keep him from concealing a few tricks up his sleeve. How many other writers out there could thread together a medieval manuscript with a weirdly addictive video game, showing that all those late nights with PlayStation 2 aren't so different from the kinds of pleasures we associate with reading? At last, an author who can give me my literary and video game thrills all in one.

book lover's delight

Codex reminds me in some ways of the Da Vinci Code; much of its appeal comes from the fascinating historical information the author makes integral to the page-turning plot. I've been reading books all my life (with the occasional off year) but had no idea the history of book creation had so much to it, especially in the immediate post-Gutenberg years. Codex(which takes place in the present day) has an absorbing plot and builds to a pay-off that genuinely pays off. If you're a person who likes books, you'll enjoy your time with this one.

a vacation in dreamy realism

I don't read thrillers, so I haven't a clue whether this really is one, but I do love being seduced into the unfamiliar territory of a brilliant and perceptive and unsettling new novelist - literary novelist - and that's what I've found in Lev Grossman's CODEX. Grossman writes with such patience and mastery that you are already deep within Edward Wozny's world, taking a vacation in his dreamy realism, when you realize that you have been entangled in a readerly conspiracy of cryptological texts, computer games, and egghead scholars who serve as the cats paws to two elegantly vindictive and sinister nobles. Is it a thriller? Is THE CRYING OF LOT 49 a thriller? In any case, I was thrilled by CODEX - an excruciating round of intellectual strip poker that claims your shorts on the very last page.