Naming Machine

There's nothing more dangerous than an unnamed thing.

Something fell somewhere and words disappeared from the world. With words, the clear boundaries between things and human civilization as we knew it disappeared. Monsters emerge from the nameless wilderness and nightmares come to life. Ghosts walk among humans, work in factories and use the remnants of dreams as fuel. Steam trains pass through the region and one of them houses a naming committee that laboriously searches for names for everything people once took for granted.

Along with the named ones, a nameless namesake travels on the train. Her mission is to deliver names to things, but she herself has no name. Moreover, after a series of strange attacks, he must escape and embark on a journey with a patched-up ghost, a wailing monster and a nameless beast that roams among the shadows. He tries to find his lost sister, the truth about his past and his own place in the world, and gradually discovers that he may have to change the world radically first.

In the novel The Namesake, post-apocalyptic scenery mixes with playfully poetic imagery and adventure with reflections on the workings of language, the world and human society. Is it harder to find the last great frontier word - or love and freedom?

–––

The namesake understands what the basic magic of language is, and can breathe it into every page.
— Holly Black, author of The Cruel Prince series

In The Namesake, Jedediah Berry presents his own version of a world where understanding changes the nature of things forever. This book has big ambitions, offers an irresistible heroine and a world that will engulf you - and all of this makes it extremely revelatory.
— Reactor Magazine

The namesake is a miracle. A masterfully presented journey full of wonders, where language and ghosts, monsters, the meaning of words and mysteries play a crucial role. You're in for a haunting, gorgeous novel train ride that feels both new and ancient at the same time, a work of post-apocalyptic myth.
— Erin Morgenstern, author of The Night Circus