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language: English
country: USA
year: 2023
form: novel
genre(s): fantasy
dates read: 11.9.24-19.9.24
Moses Ose Utomi’s The Lies of the Ajungo is an odd little book. at times it feels very Teen. its protagonist, Tutu, is, after all, only twelve-turning-thirteen throughout the novel. I was, frankly, a little skeptical of this; he vacillated wildly between feeling like a twelve-year-old and feeling like he was at least sixteen or eighteen. either way, sometimes very teen. it is also, however, very dark, in ways that do not feel particularly teen, and as far as I know it hasn’t been marketed as a teen book.
insofar as it felt like YA, it didn’t work for me. insofar as it felt like adult fiction, it’s excellent, if a bit rushed and also a bit obvious. it is a book about class warfare, about demystification, and about the ways the working class is made disposable. to a more limited extent, it is also a story about international solidarity, but it weirdly turns away from this and retreats into the realm of the national.
the novel begins with a story, the claim that “[t]here is no water in the City of Lies”, whose inhabitants — subject to the oppression of a foreign power, the Ajungo, have their tongues cut out when they turn thirteen in exchange for just enough water to survive. on the edge of his thirteenth birthday, Tutu makes a bargain with the city’s oba: he will follow in the footsteps of hundreds of children before him and seek water for the city, in exchange for a year’s water for his mother.
in the desert — where, he has been warned, there are no friends — he begins to unravel everything he believed he knew about his home; he finds, inevitably, not only water, and friends, but also the truth.
the narrative is compressed — the book is only 84 pages. I think it might have been better served by being a little bit longer in order to allow more space for character development. as it was, some of the things that should have been character moments didn’t land the way I think they were supposed to; they happened quickly and the book moved on just as quickly.
I enjoyed the way the Seers’ magic worked — powered essentially by a Seer’s conviction, their belief that they will be able to do whatever it is they are attempting to do. it did strike me as a bit idealist, but it was paired with very material change, so.
and the ending is totally unexpected. in a longer book it would have been devastating; in this short book I was still impressed by it even without the emotional impact I think it could have had, just as a bold narrative choice.
all told, there are a lot of good things here, but I just didn’t quite love it / wasn’t quite blown away by it.
moods: dark, hopeful, mysterious