The Naming Song

by Jedediah Berry

Overview

A gorgeously imaginative fantasy in the spirit of Hayao Miyazaki and Guillermo del Toro.

“The Naming Song understands the fundamental magic of language, and breathes that magic onto every page.” —Holly Black, #1 New York Times bestseller

There's nothing more dangerous than an unnamed thing

When the words went away, the world changed.

All meaning was lost, and every border fell. Monsters slipped from dreams to haunt the waking while ghosts wandered the land in futile reveries. Only with the rise of the committees of the named—Maps, Ghosts, Dreams, and Names—could the people stand against the terrors of the nameless wilds. They built borders around their world and within their minds, shackled ghosts and hunted monsters, and went to war against the unknown.

For one unnamed courier of the Names Committee, the task of delivering new words preserves her place in a world that fears her. But after a series of monstrous attacks on the named, she is forced to flee her committee and seek her long-lost sister. Accompanied by a patchwork ghost, a fretful monster, and a nameless animal who prowls the shadows, her search for the truth of her past opens the door to a revolutionary future—for the words she carries will reshape the world.

The Naming Song is a book of deep secrets and marvelous discoveries, strange adventures and dangerous truths. It's the story of a world locked in a battle over meaning. Most of all, it's the perfect fantasy for anyone who's ever dreamed of a stranger, freer, more magical world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250907981
Publisher:	Tor Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/24/2024
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	70,610
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Jedediah Berry is the author of a novel, The Manual of Detection, and a story in cards, The Family Arcana. He lives in Western Massachusetts. Together with his partner, writer Emily Houk, he runs Ninepin Press, an independent publisher of fiction, poetry, and games in unusual shapes.

Editorial Reviews

07/22/2024

Berry (The Manual of Detection) probes how it feels to be voiceless in this ambitious fantasy. In a world where the names of people, places, and things have been forgotten, it is the Name Committee’s goal to remember. Working for them is an unnamed courier, who’s responsible for delivering names to the things they identify. But the job isn’t without its dangers: a proudly nameless group attacks the named, and Frost, chair of the Deletion Committee, wants them punished and their existence erased. Since the courier herself is nameless, she’s suspected of working with the perpetrators. When she later finds her boss, Book, dead, the courier is blamed for his killing. Afraid of Frost’s wrath, she flees, setting out on a quest to find her missing sister, Ticket, and together reconstruct their world. Berry’s universe and its linguistics-based magic system feel wholly original, and the mystery of the disappearing words will suck readers in. The threat from the nameless dissidents adds to the tension and propels the story forward, even as Berry takes his time unraveling the plot. Fantasy readers looking for a fresh and exciting new world to explore will be thrilled. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

At the heart of this brilliant, thrilling adventure is an exploration of the power of words to transform the way we see ourselves, our history, and our possible futures. The Naming Song understands the fundamental magic of language, and breathes that magic onto every page.” —Holly Black, #1 New York Times bestselling author

“A breathlessly enjoyable tale.” —Cassandra Clare, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Sword Catcher

“Every writer, of course, must make magic out of words — but in The Naming Song Jedediah Berry makes strange and wonderful magic out of the absence of words. This book is a parade of delights and nightmares, written with the kind of incantatory precision that the truest spells are made of.” —Kelly Link, author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Get In Trouble

“The Naming Song is a wonder. A masterful, marvel-filled journey of language and ghosts, of monsters and meaning and mystery. This is a haunting, glorious train ride of a novel that feels both new and old at the same time, a creature of post-apocalyptic myth.” —Erin Morgenstern, #1 national bestselling author of The Starless Sea

“Deeply immersive, magnificently imagined, Jedediah Berry's The Naming Song is an epic tale of the fantastic, where language - quite literally - has the power to remake the world. This is a vast and sweeping wonder of a novel.” —J. M. Miro, bestselling author of Ordinary Monsters

“Fans of Patricia A. McKillip’s The Forgotten Beasts of Eld or Marie Brennan’s Driftwood will be in awe of Berry’s (The Manual of Detection) wonderfully odd ode to language, story, and family.” —Library Journal, starred review

“With The Naming Song, Jedediah Berry offers a Genesis wrapped up in a Revelation—a mysterious, poetic, and invigorating post-apocalyptic adventure saga about how things can be reborn, and in some cases remade, after they have been undone. It's rare that a novel this substantial is also this strange and this fun.” —Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Ghost Variations

“Fantasy readers looking for a fresh and exciting new world to explore will be thrilled.” —Publishers Weekly

“Berry creates both a familiar and unfamiliar landscape in a sweeping epic about the language and love between us, the humanity of the living and the dead, and the raw power of creation.” —J. R. Dawson, author of The First Bright Thing

“In Jedediah Berry’s The Naming Song I perceive the simplicity and complexity of Richard Brautigan’s Watermelon Sugar, a structure that could have been borrowed from Berry’s own card game, The Family Arcana, and a nod to The Romance of the Rose. Still, it’s wholly its own engaging creature that engenders wonder and suggests a new kind of fiction.” —Jeffrey Ford, World Fantasy Award-winning author

“An anti-totalitarian, post-apocalyptic fable featuring mystical theater trains, impossible monsters, and the awesome power of story? Sign me the heck up. If we can rise against injustice even half as boldly as “the courier” and her friends, there might just be hope for humanity yet. Jedediah Berry has delivered a true epic, thrumming with life.” —GennaRose Nethercott, author of Thistlefoot and The Lumberjack's Dove

“The Naming Song is not just one of the best told fantasy novels of the last twenty-five years, it is a masterpiece of storytelling destined to be extolled as a classic.” —Howard Andrew Jones, author of Lord of a Shattered Land and The Desert of Souls

“Jedediah Berry’s The Naming Song brings the reader as close to magic as they are likely to ever get. Berry, like Ursula K. Le Guin, Iain M. Banks, or John Crowley picks up words at a different angle . . . and brings a whole new world to light. Every page is play.” —Gavin Grant, Book Moon Books

From the Publisher

★ 07/01/2024

Apocalyptic disaster wiped away the world's words. With everything unnamed, bonds fell apart, knowledge vanished, and identity disintegrated. Time passed unlabeled and unmeasured until someone rediscovered a word. From this, order sprouted, eventually coalescing into a train full of people charged with renaming all existence. Their oracles divine words from the past and pass them to couriers for delivery. The best at attaching meaning to her assignments is, perhaps, the only unnamed courier. While her namelessness makes her difficult to trust, it gives her a special connection to murky parts of the healing world. But living in the invisible pockets of the world—down unnamed streets or in dark woods—are people who refuse speech. They attack the namers, and the courier becomes ensnared in the schemes of both named and nameless. Soon she must flee alongside a ghost, a monster born of dreams, and a furry stowaway to a troupe of actors whose plays hide truths. VERDICT Fans of Patricia A. McKillip's The Forgotten Beasts of Eld or Marie Brennan's Driftwood will be in awe of Berry's (The Manual of Detection) wonderfully odd ode to language, story, and family.—Matthew Galloway

Library Journal

2024-08-06
Language is rediscovered—and strictly controlled—in Berry’s post-apocalyptic fantasy.

They call it the Silence—the massive event that wiped out all language from the world. In the aftermath, the dead walked aimlessly as ghosts and monsters came to life from nightmares. Eventually, humans rediscovered the means to “divine” new words and slowly rebuilt civilization. In this strange landscape, where words are precious and the people who produce new ones also create law and order, anything unnamed is extremely dangerous. The civilized, named people put their trust in the committees of maps, ghosts, dreams, and names, to protect them from the horrors of the wild unknown world. That’s why it’s so hard for the courier, who works for the names committee delivering new names to the world, to feel at home anywhere: She doesn’t have a name. Even her sister has abandoned her, refusing to respond to her letters. For some reason, the courier’s father never gave her a name, even though it set her up to be feared, especially when the savage unnamed people started mounting violent attacks against the named. When her boss with the names committee is killed, the courier flees, setting out to find the truth behind the attacks and about her past. The importance of language and communication is a naturally compelling theme for a book, and Berry aptly describes the intangible magic of the courier delivering a new word where none existed before. Sometimes the dreamy tone makes worldbuilding a little muddy. But though she doesn't have a name, the courier is a lively, effective protagonist who finds more lovable misfits along her journey.

An unusual fantasy about reshaping the world with words.

Kirkus Reviews