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The Forever Desert #2
by Moses Ose Utomi
Moses Ose Utomi returns to his Forever Desert series with The Truth of the Aleke, continuing his epic fable about truth, falsehood, and the shackles of history.
The Aleke is cruel. The Aleke is clever. The Aleke is coming.
500 years after the events of The Lies of the Ajungo, the City of Truth stands as the last remaining free city of the Forever Desert. A bastion of freedom and peace, the city has successfully weathered near-constant attacks from the Cult of Tutu, who have besieged it for three centuries, attempting to destroy its warriors and subjugate its people.
Seventeen-year-old Osi is a Junior Peacekeeper in the City. When the mysterious leader of the Cult, known only as the Aleke, commits a massacre in the capitol and steals the sacred God's Eyes, Osi steps forward to valiantly defend his home. For his bravery he is tasked with a tremendous responsibility—destroy the Cult of Tutu, bring back the God's Eyes, and discover the truth of the Aleke.
"This heart-wrenching sequel recaptures the tone of the opening volume and again packs an epic's worth of worldbuilding into a limited page count.... This mind-bending story will have both new and returning fans hooked." ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Utomi's searing, thought-provoking fantasy novella has heartbreaking parallels in the present and is highly recommended." ―Library Journal (starred review)
"Utomi returns to the Forever Desert with this devastating, timely fantasy novella about the impossibility of peace when the powerful seek only to control and manipulate others.…There is no solace in this thought-provoking sequel, only uncomfortable truth." ―Booklist (starred review)
"The Truth of the Aleke is riveting and merciless, an exploration of power, deceit, corruption, and ultimately, hope. I was not prepared, and neither are you." ―Fonda Lee, author of the Green Bone Saga and Untethered Sky
"The end of one story braids into the beginning of the next, and in this powerful sequel, truth cuts deeper than any lie." ―Marie Brennan, author of A Natural History of Dragons
This information about The Truth of the Aleke was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Moses Ose Utomi is a Nigerian-American fantasy writer and nomad currently based out of Honolulu, Hawaii. He has an MFA in fiction from Sarah Lawrence College and short fiction publications in Fireside Fiction, Fantasy Magazine, and more. He is the author of the novella The Lies of the Ajungo and the YA fantasy novel Daughters of Oduma. When he's not writing, he's traveling, training martial arts, or doing karaoke―with or without a backing track.
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