Thirteen-year-old Kaidu wonders if he's made a mistake. He's traveled to the Nameless City from his rural homelands to see the father he's never met and to start intense combat training--even though the boy prefers reading to fighting. Kaidu is a Dao, from the nation that has ruled the City for 30 years. But the valuable seaport has been conquered and re-named so often that the locals don't bother calling it anything, and see the Dao occupation as a temporary inconvenience. As he explores outside the palace walls, Kaidu becomes interested in Rat, an always-hungry street urchin who's amazingly skilled at sprinting across rooftops. They tentatively move toward friendship until Kaidu makes the mistake of romanticizing her rootlessness. "You don't know anything about me," Rat shoots back. "Don't say I'm lucky. Ever."
Writer-illustrator Faith Erin Hicks (Friends with Boys; The Adventures of Superhero Girl) does a wonderful job of showing contrasts in sharp jabs, as when Kaido wanders the City eating savory spiced meat, then turns to see a poor family scrabbling for food in a trash pile. The Nameless City, first in a trilogy of full-color graphic novels, blends acrobatic parkour, humor and cartoon sound effects (THUNK) with a complex web of alliances: tough-as-nails bodyguard Mura is a local--the Dao students she trains call her a skral, a slur--but she stays loyal to the Dao leader who gave her a job. Kaidu soon learns that they'll all need to think about loyalty differently unless they want yet another bloody war. --Ali Davis, freelance writer and playwright, Los Angeles, Calif.