The King of Crows characters

First appears in chapter 4

Once the most famous Diviner in America, now a wanted fugitive with her face in every newspaper for a disaster she did not cause. She is grieving Mabel, furious with the adults who manufactured her, and holding the group together mostly by refusing to stop talking. Her gift for reading objects has become the group's main way of finding out anything true.

First appears in chapter 4

The pickpocket who can keep from being seen, on the run with the others and carrying his own grief and the unfinished business of his mother. Practical about hiding, feeding and moving a group of hunted people, and in love with Evie at the worst possible moment.

First appears in chapter 5

The Follies star who can call fire, now unable to go back to the stage that made her recognisable. Her control has been shaken badly by everything that happened in New York, and she is afraid of what her own gift does when she is frightened.

First appears in chapter 5

The Harlem healer and poet, a fugitive travelling with his younger brother through a country where being Black and wanted is doubly dangerous. His healing costs him more each time he uses it, and he is trying to keep Isaiah out of a fight the boy insists on joining.

First appears in chapter 5

Memphis's younger brother, whose visions now arrive constantly and reach across the whole country. He is the one the dead and the dreaming find easiest to reach, which makes him the group's best source of warning and the most exposed person in it.

First appears in chapter 6

The Chinatown dream walker, who can find and speak with the dead in dreams, travelling with the group and applying the same hard scepticism to every plan they make. She is the one who asks what the evidence actually shows.

First appears in chapter 6

The dream walker and songwriter, whose ability to reach sleepers across great distances becomes the group's telegraph now that they are scattered. Steady company in bad conditions, and increasingly worn down by how much of the work falls on his gift.

First appears in chapter 6

Will's assistant, unnaturally strong and dependent on a serum manufactured by the man now hunting them. Every day on the road takes him further from a supply he cannot live without, and he knows exactly who controls it.

Also known as Guillaume Johnson

First appears in chapter 7

The blind singer who once drained Isaiah nearly to death and was himself a subject of the wartime programme. He travels with the Campbell brothers now, trying to be worth the trust he was given back, and he knows things about the programme nobody else living does.

First appears in chapter 9

Evie's uncle, who confessed his part in manufacturing the Diviners far too late to be forgiven for it. He is still the best scholar of the thing they are fighting, and he is trying to be useful to young people who no longer trust him.

Also known as Margaret Walker

First appears in chapter 9

Will's former colleague on the wartime programme, who spent years tracking the children it produced and warning about what was opened at Hopeful Harbor. Clear-eyed about her own guilt and unwilling to waste time on it.

First appears in chapter 10

The industrialist who funded the programme that made the Diviners, opened the breach with his machine, and then handed the blame to them. He still intends to deliver the future he promised the country, and he has the government, the press and a great deal of money behind him.

First appears in chapter 4

The man in the tall stovepipe hat, attended by crows, who raises the dead and walks between the living world and the place beyond the breach. He is unfailingly polite, enjoys an audience, and deals in bargains that cost more than they appear to. The dead now rise wherever he has been.

First appears in chapter 8

The elderly woman from the Bennington who knew what walked at night long before anyone believed her, and who once helped bind a man the King of Crows had remade. What she remembers about him is older and more specific than anything in Will's collection.

First appears in chapter 56

A young Diviner living on a farm far out in the middle of the country, who reaches the others in dreams and says she has seen how the King of Crows can be stopped. Isolated, watched over by her family, and very certain about what has to happen next.