★The Naming Song.  Jedediah Berry. Tor. Sept. 2024. 384p. ISBN 9781250907981. $28.99. FANTASY

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.