The Naming Song: I absolutely loved this premise

The Naming Song by Jedediah Berry

The Naming Song (2024), by Jedediah Berry, is an ambitious work with a thoughtful and thought-provoking premise, and if (for me at least), it didn’t fully carry through on that ambition or premise, I’ve got to give credit to Berry for the reach. Certainly, given both that ambition and the level of writing here, I’ll look forward to what comes next from them (and also check out some prior work).

The story is set in world that developed after a great cataclysm that seemingly erased all language (amongst more tangible losses; the world is filled with ruins), such that there is the Named and the Nameless, whether we’re talking places or people, objects or concepts. “Diviners” somehow ascertain a word, and then Couriers “deliver” the word to the people:

Before a word could be spoken aloud by others, a courier had to speak it first. And to speak a new word, the courier had to know the thing it names. Had to hold it in mind like a perfect glass bead, had to become that bead — and then had to break it.

The delivery makes the Named thing/concept/person “real” and grounded to the world in ways it was not when it was unnamed. In towns, for instance, there are nameless places that are difficult if not impossible to see even though they lie just a few yards away. This is also a world full of ghosts — who do not talk but can work can also be burned for fuel for machines — and “monsters”, created from the detritus of dreams. And it’s a world in conflict, not too far removed from a horrific war between the Named and the Nameless, the repetition of which seems closer and closer to becoming reality as more acts of violence and terror occur. Finally, it’s a world built on story, particularly the story of Hand and Moon, the first and second Namer respectively.

Our protagonist is a Courier (having never been named for reasons explained in the novel, she is known only as “the Courier”) whose home is with the rest of the Names Committee aboard the Number Twelve train. There, diviners divine and then her boss, Book, gives her an envelope with whatever new word they’ve come up with, and she goes to deliver it. Early on, the Courier’s main goal is to make contact with her sister Ticket, who left home years ago when both were young. Soon though, she finds herself entangled in the political machinations of an authoritarian-wannabe Committee head, in the conflict between the Named and the Nameless, in a potential rebellion against the current hierarchical system of governance.

Jedediah Berry

I absolutely loved this premise of rebuilding language one word at a time, the idea of names calling into being the things they name (somewhat similar to the classic LeGuin usage in her EARTHSEA series). And I loved the stylistic fashion we are introduced to the concept early on, with paragraphs beginning with lines like “She delivered echo . . . She delivered stowaway … She delivered brass … She delivered moth … She delivered harrow. Each opening line followed by an explanatory vignetter: “She delivered float She lay face up in water and let her legs dangle . . . She spoke the word, swam ashore, and put her clothes on. Float, floating, floats. Once the word was delivered, anyone could speak it, or change it a little to suit what they needed to say. She floated. We saw her floating.”

It’s true that as much as I loved the concept and its, well, delivery, it doesn’t stand to think too much about how this all works in a day-to-day pragmatic sense, or how the diviners come up with words, or a host of other little niggling details that if you focus on could derail the whole thing. And so Berry has an almost dreamlike approach here, a sort of mistiness that hovers over things and lets the reader sort of slide through it all. Which I find both smart and effective. At least for much of the novel. Once we start getting into a more grounded storyline that mistiness wasn’t quite so useful, and particularly in the latter stages where elements of logistics and scale come into play, it was downright frustrating.

In fact, while the plot twists and scenes of action and tension are mostly well executed throughout the more “normal” kind of plot, I find myself bemoaning we’d gone down that road, as it all felt familiar and sometimes predicable (the wannabe dictator, plucky band of rebels on the run, big battle scenes, etc.) and something that even if done mostly well felt like a bit of a letdown after the early part of the story with its monsters and ghosts and Named/Nameless. I’m not sure one could have sustained that misty, surreal storyline over a novel (and honestly, even with the more traditional plotting this one felt a bit over-long), but I would have loved to have seen a novella or long short story that left out much of that traditional storyline.

Though of course, that’s me complaining the author wrote the novel they wanted to write and not the one I wanted to read, which has its own issues obviously. So addressing the novel Berry did write, the usage of both the ghosts and monsters was wonderful, often original, and at times quite moving. While I felt the world’s monomyth of Hand and Moon was a bit predicable in the final revelation, the presentation and evocation of it throughout was nicely atmospheric and felt both true to this world and wholly embedded within it. The prose is varied and sharply calibrated to its purpose, clear when necessary and lovely and lyrical at other times.

Characters are a bit hit and miss for me. The Courier is a strongly realized character, and her growth throughout as she finds her way in this world was a pleasure to follow. The speaking characters, with the exception of one or two like Book, were less fully developed and engaging, and the romance felt a bit perfunctory. My two favorite characters, and the ones I most engaged with emotionally, were the two who did not speak: one the Patchwork Ghost that has been with the Courier for most of her life and the other a monster she accidentally creates. Finally, as noted, the book did feel its length, bogging down in the latter parts somewhat so that I was a bit impatient, especially to get through the battle scenes, which felt repetitive. On the other hand, the post-battle, almost an epilogue-like close, won me back over even if I wished it had come sooner.

In the end, I was thrilled with the premise, loved the early parts for that premise and the author’s style, mostly enjoyed the rest even if a bit disappointed at the track it went down and a bit impatient with the pacing/length, and certainly was happy I’d read it. Recommended.