Truth is a cruel teacher. It does not appease. It does not reconsider. Its lessons vary in delivery--sometimes trickling in over decades, sometimes crashing down all at once--but consistently disregard the desires of the student.

In The Truth of the Aleke, the protagonist is Osi, a junior Peacekeeper keen to rise in the ranks of the City of Truth and defend it against the threat of the Aleke. When the Aleke and its cultists commit a massacre and steal from the city and Osi is witness to the violence, he joins the city's defense earlier and more intensively than anticipated. It turns out the Aleke might not be exactly what he's been taught.

I really liked the first novella in this series, and liked this one even more. Utomi does so much here with some really complex themes - cycles of revenge, ideology - and the characters are multi-faceted and well developed in so few pages. I feel like I'll be thinking about this book for some time, and while I'm not a big re-reader this one is going on my list to revisit later. This is hands down the best novella I've read all year, and I'm eagerly awaiting the next installment in the series.

Content warnings: violence, war, death, gore, child death, murder, grief