Characters
All-Alonio: A solitary, yet profound man who shelters Falk and gives him a "slider," or flying machine. He provides Falk with oblique but pertinent guidance
Estrel: A human agent of the Shing tasked with bringing Falk to Es Toch and convincing him of the beneficial nature of their rule. She wears a necklace of apparent religious significance, but which is in fact a communication device. Estrel eventually suffers a psychotic break-down, attempts to kill Falk and suffers an unknown fate at the hands of the Shing.
Falk: A middle aged man who is the protagonist of the story; he appears to suffer from amnesia. As Ramarren he was navigator of the Werel expedition to Earth.
Har Orry: A youth raised and largely brain-washed by the Shing. Other than Falk he is the only known survivor of the Werel expedition. Like Estrel he is used by the Shing to convince Falk of their benign purposes.
Ken Kenyek: A Shing mindhandler, who together with fellow Lords Abundibot and Kradgy, attempts to deceive and manipulate Falk.
Parth: A young human women of the Forest People, who helps re-educate Falk and becomes his lover. She farewells him, knowing that he will not return.
Prince of Kansas: An elderly man who, without force, leads a sophisticated enclave of approximately 200 people living in the wilderness. He is in possession of luxuries such as a great library, domesticated dogs (otherwise extinct in this era), and a complex patterning frame that he uses to foretell Falk's future.
Zove: A father-figure of a family of Forest People whose teaching-by-paradox methods closely resemble those of the sage Laozi.
Read more about this topic: City Of Illusions
Famous quotes containing the word characters:
“What makes literature interesting is that it does not survive its translation. The characters in a novel are made out of the sentences. That’s what their substance is.”
—Jonathan Miller (b. 1936)
“His leanings were strictly lyrical, descriptions of nature and emotions came to him with surprising facility, but on the other hand he had a lot of trouble with routine items, such as, for instance, the opening and closing of doors, or shaking hands when there were numerous characters in a room, and one person or two persons saluted many people.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“When the characters are really alive before their author, the latter does nothing but follow them in their action, in their words, in the situations which they suggest to him.”
—Luigi Pirandello (1867–1936)