Koku Akanbi: The Heart of Midnight

After cynical thirteen year-old orphan Koku accidentally releases a demon on a trip to the British Museum, his uncle sends him to Olori, the West African land of origins, for the summer. Cursed with a weird name and an illness to match, Koku thinks life can’t get any worse. His sickle cell anaemia has always left him feeling unwanted and powerless, and now he’s being parcelled off to a country he barely remembers.

But when Koku arrives in Olori, he finds himself in a land of endless sun and powerful magical tribes – and on the wrong side of a war. The ruling Ogún tribe is trying to destroy the night, and the magical creatures who need it, forever. As the last living descendent of the darkness-controlling Olókun tribe, Koku is the only one who can stop them.

Accompanied by Moremi, a martial artist with an anger problem, and Osoosi, a shapeshifter who spends half of her time as a hyena, Koku must venture into the dangerous jungle of Jujuland to master his powers, find the powerful talisman called the Heart of Midnight and restore Night to Olori. But he’ll have to move fast, because a teenaged assassin with a soul-swallowing sword is on his tail… and if the night disappears, then so will he.

A Jujuland adventure story.

© 2023 Maria Motunrayo Adebisi (P) 2023 Hodder & Stoughton Limited