In another scene towards the end, a monk from the Named describes the Dao’s battle as a “sneak attack.” Kaidu repeats back the story he knows: “It wasn’t a ‘sneak attack’! It was a heroic battle.” The monk answers, “So the Dao say. It’s a bracing contrast, one left for the reader to wrestle with, and the kind of brutal introspection this text needs more of. 89), Kaidu’s father (part of the Dao, the group currently occupying the city) tells him, “For thirty years the Dao have brought peace and prosperity to the Nameless City.” Hicks makes a great choice: to illustrate this scene with Kaidu receiving this pronouncement from his father while sitting in front of a painting showing Dao warriors in battle - specifically while they are slaughtering people. Who makes up “The Named” and when does a city resident become considered as such? Are “The Named” composed of any disenfranchised citizens no matter who is conquering the city or can you become part of “The Named” when a new conquering group arrives? If Kaidu’s Dao people were conquered and replaced as leaders would the Dao then belong to “The Named”? Hicks never specifies any of this or sorts it out in any coherent way and that’s a real problem in a story that is ostensibly about the importance of different cultures and people coming together to build a coalition: how can we appreciate that if we can’t really tell them apart in the first place?Īt one point in The Nameless City (pg. I say presumably because one of the main weaknesses of The Nameless City is not taking the impact of generations of conquest as serious as is warranted. the residents of the city, presumably made up of “generations” of residents who have survived the cycles of occupation.
Rat is a member of the group known only as “The Named,” i.e.
Kaidu is a member of the Dao people, the current occupiers of the city. In Hicks’s universe, “different worlds” pretty much breaks down to “conquerors” and “conquered.” The main action takes place in the titular “Nameless City” - a city, valuable for trade due to its location at the opening of a river passage, that has been the subject of repeated cycles of conquest over generations. The main plot revolves around two characters, Rat and Kaidu, who become best friends even though they are from different worlds. The Nameless City is the first in a series.
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