Characters
- Rail is willful and highly protective of Moa. Rail was left without functioning lungs after one particularly bad probability storm, and therefore must constantly use a respirator provided to him by the Thief master Anya-Jacanca, in return for his services as a thief. Rail believes his duty is to protect unassuming, naive Moa from the roughness of the ghetto, a job he carries out dutifully. He is highly distrustful of Vago, but allows him to stay with them because he is so important to Moa. At the end of the book, it becomes apparent that Rail has romantic feelings for Moa, and vice versa.
- Moa is Rail's best friend and helps him steal things for Anya-Jacana. She is sickly and weak, and depends heavily on Rail for her own survival. She strikes up a friendship with the golem, Vago. Moa is convinced that there is more to the world beyond Orokos, though Rail does not and even scorns her convictions. The more feeling of the two, Moa tends to follow her heart more than her head, a tendency that gets her and her friends into trouble more than once. She loves Rail very much, although she's not always sure in which way.
- Vago is a golem, half man half machine. He was created by the Protectorate Chief of Police, Lysander Bane, to be a super soldier against Revenants. He was created to be a prototype and was a murderer named Tukor Kep before he lost his memories in the surgery. As he is about to finish his programing a probability storm takes him from the laboratory and places him in the home of the toy maker, Cretch. Cretch abuses Vago because Vago reminds him of a granddaughter he lost to the same storm. Vago finally has a moment where he snaps and attacks Cretch during a beating. He is later found by Rail and Moa. He wants to stay with Moa and protect her but doesn't like to be around Rail. He is eventually caught by the Secret police who program him to hate ghetto people. Vago almost murders Moa but his former compassion for her overrides his new programing. At the end of the book, Vago is sunk in the ocean and plans to stay there unless the currents happen to take him to shore someday.
Read more about this topic: Storm Thief
Famous quotes containing the word characters:
“The first glance at History convinces us that the actions of men proceed from their needs, their passions, their characters and talents; and impresses us with the belief that such needs, passions and interests are the sole spring of actions.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“No one of the characters in my novels has originated, so far as I know, in real life. If anything, the contrary was the case: persons playing a part in my life—the first twenty years of it—had about them something semi-fictitious.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)
“I cannot be much pleased without an appearance of truth; at least of possibility—I wish the history to be natural though the sentiments are refined; and the characters to be probable, though their behaviour is excelling.”
—Frances Burney (1752–1840)