Character guide

Bowen J. Tyler

major

Also known as Bowen, Tyler, Bowen Tyler, Bowen J. Tyler, Jr., Tyler, Jr.

Bowen Tyler knows submarines the way a mother knows her baby's face, yet his heart belongs to aviation, and it is that restless pull toward the new that puts him aboard a doomed ship in 1916. When the U-33 is captured and then lost, he must hold together a crew of enemies and allies while the sea delivers them somewhere no chart admits. His manuscript, found in a thermos bottle off Greenland, is the voice that carries the reader into Caspak.

Lys La Rue

major

Also known as Lys, Miss La Rue, Miss La

Lys La Rue is the only woman among the U-33's mixed company, and suspicion falls on her long before trust does, with Bowen himself half-convinced she is a German spy. When a saboteur named Benson reaches for the diving rudders, she is the one awake, the one armed, and the one who fires without missing. Her quiet competence shames the men around her and quietly reorders the loyalties of the whole voyage.

Ajor

major

Also known as Brave little Ajor, Plucky little Ajor, little Ajor

Ajor is a cos-ata-lo, one of the rare Caspakians born as other races are born, which makes her both prized and hunted among the Galus. Her father Jor is high chief, but the warrior Du-seen wants her and the chieftainship both, and his dealings with the Wieroo have made her a pawn in a coming war. She teaches Bowen the Caspakian oath, the meaning of the seven cycles, and the geography of a world evolving upward through its own strata.

Bradley

supporting

Also known as Lieutenant Bradley, Brad, Galu Bradley

Bradley is the kind of Englishman who would rather die swinging than vanish into the unknown, and Caspak offers him plenty of both. Captured and thrown into the Blue Place of Seven Skulls, he survives a raving, half-eaten wretch who whispers of a way out and then dies at his feet. His ordeal turns the story's middle from exploration into endurance, and his eventual rise among the Wieroos makes him a strange mirror of the world he came to conquer.

Nobs

supporting

Also known as faithful old Nobs, poor Nobs, old Nobs, the wily Nobs

Nobs has been Bowen's companion since before the submarine, and Caspak has remade him into something closer to a wolf than a pet. He dives headfirst into streams to escape hyenas, feasts on the kills of every hunt, and stays close when the ape-men steal Lys from the fort. His presence is a small thread of home in a world where nothing else is familiar.

John Tippet

supporting

Also known as Tippet, the Englishman, poor Tippet

Tippet is the sort of man who puts a bullet through a bear's ear and then apologizes for the wasted ammunition. He marches with Bradley's party through jungles thick with club-men, hatchet-men, and worse, meeting each new grotesque with the same dry composure. His steadiness is the quiet counterweight to Bradley's temper, and his presence keeps the expedition's morale from collapsing into the landscape.

Baron von Schoenvorts

supporting

Also known as von Schoenvorts, Schoenvorts, Baron Friedrich von Schoenvorts, the Baron

Von Schoenvorts leads the German contingent among the castaways, treating captured Britishers as beasts of burden and encouraging his men to beat them. His vanity is as brittle as his authority: a stray branch across the face provokes him to break a sailor's nose, and only Bowen Tyler's leveled pistol stops him from striking an officer. He embodies the peril of the expedition's internal divisions, a bully whose cowardice and malice threaten the fragile cooperation the survivors need to endure Caprona.

Olson

supporting

Also known as Mr. Olson

Olson is among the prisoners marched inland by von Schoenvorts and his armed Germans, staggering under heavy cans while a noncommissioned officer beats him and his companions with a stick. His suffering dramatizes the survivors' fractured loyalties: the same peril that should unite them has instead produced captors and captives. His presence in the column reminds the reader that the island's dangers are matched by the human cruelty the castaways bring with them.

Thomas Billings

supporting

Also known as Mr. Tom Billings, Billings, Tom Billings, Tom, Mr. Billings

Billings leads the Toreador's search party, keeping his plans for scaling Caprona's barrier cliffs to himself until the island is actually sighted. Where others wager and speculate, he has quietly stowed an electric drill, a lifesaving mortar, and the crated parts of a hydro-aeroplane, unveiling the last as his most feasible scheme. His patient, methodical competence makes him the counterweight to the expedition's uncertainties, and his reconnaissance will determine whether the rescue party ever reaches the world Bowen Tyler described.

Galu

supporting

Also known as the Galu, a Galu, Du-seen, the seventh Galu

Ajor, a cos-ata-lo of the Galu, understands better than any outsider the evolutionary war between her people and the Wieroo, who steal Galu women to breed their own kind. Rather than submit to Du-seen's compact with the Wieroo, she chooses flight toward the Kro-lu country, knowing that to a cos-ata-lo any fate is preferable to the Wieroo's clutches. Her knowledge of Caspak's races and her desperate flight give the story its human stakes and its clearest window into the island's strange order.

So-al

minor

Also known as Al-tan

A native character encountered in the land.

Chal-az

minor

Also known as Chal

A native of Caprona.

Brady

minor

A sailor among the survivors.

Co-tan

minor

Also known as little Co-tan, Tan

A native child or young person.

Fosh-bal-soj

minor

A native of Caprona.

Jimmy Hollis

minor

Also known as Hollis, James

A crew member.

Luata

minor

A native deity or figure.

An-tak

minor

Also known as Tak

A native of Caprona.

Sinclair

minor

A crew member.

Whitely

minor

A sailor.

Ace

minor

A crew member.

Benson

minor

A member of the crew.

Ahm

minor

A native of Caprona.

To-mar

minor

A native character.

Plesser

minor

A crew member.

Kho

minor

A native of Caprona.

Tsa

minor

A native character.

Kro-lu

minor

Also known as The Kro-lu

A native of Caprona.

Wilson

minor

A crew member.

Jor

minor

Also known as Jor the High Chief, Jor the chief

A chief among the Galus.

To-jo

minor

Also known as Jo

A native of Caprona.

Schwartz

minor

A German crew member.

Dietz

minor

A German crew member.

Hindle

minor

A crew member.

Colin Short

minor

Also known as Short

A crew member.

Gord

minor

A native of Caprona.