Lies of the Ajungo

In the City of Lies, there is no water. The Ajungo Empire holds the only wells, and it extracts a terrible price for what little it sends: the tongue of every citizen who reaches the age of thirteen. Generation after generation, the people have paid, growing up silent, thirsty, and certain there is nothing beyond the desert but death.

Tutu will turn thirteen in three days, and his mother is dying of thirst before his eyes. Desperate, he strikes a bargain with the city's leader: water for his mother now, and in return he will do what no one has ever managed — travel out into the Forever Desert and bring back water to save them all. So Tutu sets out, keeping the tongue he was about to lose, and begins a journey that will remake him and shatter everything he thought he knew about his home.

The Lies of the Ajungo is Moses Ose Utomi's slim, propulsive opening to the Forever Desert — a dark, fable-like fantasy told in the cadence of legend. Set in an African-inspired secondary world of wonder and cruelty, it is a story about truth and control, coming of age, and the hard, liberating cost of seeing a world built on lies for what it really is.