All words are made up. Some words—like a lol that you actually pronounce instead of just laughing out loud—are more made up than others. But in the world of Jedediah Berry’s The Naming Song, words have to be divined and delivered by officials. Generations ago the something fell from the something tree and the Silence wiped out all of the words from before. Our protagonist delivers words where they are needed (she famously delivered the word “trouble.”) and life rolls along just like the naphtha-powered train the diviners, namers, and others use to get from here to there. That is, it rolls along until our narrator has a couple of near-fatal meetings with the nameless and a conspiracy begins to appear.
The world Berry describes in The Naming Song strikes me as dusty, featureless, and mostly empty. But when the namers visit and deliver a new word, it feels like another color pops into existence or something unsee comes into clarity. It’s as if the entire world has the feeling of a word they once knew constantly at the tip of their tongues. It’s a relief when people like our protagonist come through and pronounce a new noun, verb, adjective, etc. Our protagonist’s deepest wish is to someday deliver a border word, a word that can reshape the world like light, dark, day, or night. For those readers who are linguistically inclined, the entire premise is a fascinating opportunity to muse on how words are coined or language began in the first place. But then Berry gives us so many other things to puzzle out: what’s up with all the ghosts? How do the diviners figure out the right word for something? How do you embody a shadow enough to name it? Why couldn’t they have come up with a better word than “monster” for the beings people can dream up?
I can’t summarize The Naming Song, even in part like I usually do, because this is the kind of novel you have to just dive into and trust that the characters, plot, and setting will carry you to an amazing ending. If I try to explain things instead of slowly revealing them the way Berry does with his intelligent, subtle prose, everything will sound odd. Also, I might accidentally spoil something. Instead, I will simply say that there are so many things I love about this delightfully weird story. The nameless courier is brave, clever, and curious—everything I want in a protagonist. There are multiple layers of conspiracy and cross-purposes for me to dig through alongside her. Then there are all those questions I just mentioned to muse on later. This book also features some incredible showdowns, betrayals, sacrifices, and rescues throughout the plot. This book shines with imagination and, as soon as I finished the last page, I had to just stare off into space to collect myself because The Naming Song utterly transported me.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.