Post by James NicollThe Truth of the Aleke (Forever Desert, volume 2) by Moses Ose Utomi
In the tradition of too many heroes to name individually, a determined
young man ignores the admonitions of his hidebound elders to do that
which the young man is certain must be right.
https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/face-the-truth
From reading the review, it seemed as if he was acting entirely at the
behest of his elders... after the earlier incident which set up the
main story.
Not having read the book, my first guess was that he would find out
that that his side was the aggressor, and the Cult were the good guys.
But since this starts off with a cruel attack on peaceful people, that
seemed unlikely.
Instead, the review seems to suggest that the problem is that even
with the power of a God's Eye, killing the Aleke and destroying the
Cult thereby was just too big a mission for any one man, even the
protagonist, given that the author is focused on realism instead of
escapism.
Even perhaps more fitting - and even potentially relevant to
contemporary politics - would be if he were to find that fulfilling
his mission would create such chaos that the outcome would be worse
for his people than the current status quo. Some things in the review
suggest this possibility.
I presume this book was written for an African audience, and unlike
Americans, these people don't have the feeling of security that comes
with having one's country's currency as the world's reserve currency,
and having a history of stable democracy of over two centuries, and of
having unparalleled industrial and military might, including nuclear
armaments and a credible second-strike capability.
Such an audience might well have a different standard for what
constitutes the necessary level of gritty realism in a story to remove
it from the category of unrealistic over-optimistic wish-fulfillment
fantasy than an American audience.
Perhaps more... instructive... to Western audiences would be African
SF that met with the approval of an African John W. Campbell. That is,
stories in the "Africa conquers the world" vein. In contrast, a story
like _The Truth of the Aleke_ seems likely to be dismissed as a
peculiar thing from a strange culture, but lacking in entertainment
value. But not necessarily; if it was well-written enough to merit a
review by James Nicoll, maybe its value as literature, in things like
how its protagonist is characterized, will earn it recognition.
John Savard