Book Details:
Author: Naomi Eselojor
Release Date: October 13, 2026Series:
Genre: Science-Fiction, African Steampunk
Format: E-book
Pages: 186
Publisher: Ruadán Books
Blurb:
Set in an alternative steampunk Nigeria, Naomi Eselojor’s Africanfuturist novella is a tale of community sheltering, resistance, and technological responsibility, for fans of Nnedi Okorafor, Suyi Davies Okungbowa, and Wole Talabi.
1859, Nigeria. In the fishing village of Itu Agan, nine-year-old Alabi and his inventor father test a new steamboat prototype when a platoon of automaton soldiers raid their village. The metal invaders execute the village chief and
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capture Korede, Alabi’s father, leaving him and his mother alone and devastated.
There is no choice but to accept the new order. All the village boys begin work as fishermen and plantation farmers as soon as they become teenagers and, for nine long years, Alabi must put the promise of invention nurtured in his childhood to rest.
When he discovers that his father Korede is alive, working for the colonizer regime, Alabi is determined to reconnect with him. After years of hard work to obtain a travel permit and with threats of his mother’s imprisonment should he not return in two months, Alabi sails to the city of factories, unprepared for the resistance that is brewing and the adventure that awaits…
Review
The City of Factories by Naomi Eselojor is a West African steampunk fantasy that combines industrial machinery, cultural history and anti-colonial resistance with an emotionally charged search for family. Set in an alternate 1866, the novel follows eighteen-year-old Alabi as he enters the smoke-choked city of Apapa to find his father, Korede, a gifted inventor abducted nine years earlier by the automaton regime. His travel permit allows him only two months to complete his mission, while his mother remains behind as collateral, turning every mechanical tick of the badge into a reminder of what failure may cost.
The best part about the book is the world itself. Apapa is rendered as a place of grinding gears, poisonous smoke, relentless labour and spectacular invention, where technology has become both evidence of African ingenuity and an instrument of oppression. The novel draws meaningfully upon Yoruba life and the historical power of the Benin Empire, incorporating food, language, social customs, spiritual beliefs and craftsmanship without treating them as decorative additions. Its contrast between occupied Apapa and the fortified Benin Kingdom also raises compelling questions about isolation: can a community preserve its freedom by closing its gates when suffering continues beyond them?
Alabi provides the story with a sympathetic emotional centre, although Ruka, with her concealed blades, smoke bombs and fierce determination to prove herself, often commands the page. Their developing affection brings warmth to an otherwise brutal journey, while the abandoned children Alabi encounters reveal the human consequences of the regime more painfully than any battlefield can. The most affecting relationship, however, is between Alabi and his father. Their eventual confrontation refuses the comfort of an uncomplicated reunion, examining how prolonged captivity can turn survival into accommodation and privilege into complicity. Korede’s choices are troubling, yet they are never made emotionally simple.
The City of Factories is an imaginative and extremely engaging story about resistance, technological power and the courage required to question the compromises made by those we love. Eselojor gives African history and mythology an exhilarating steampunk vocabulary while remaining attentive to hunger, grief, displacement and the machinery through which colonial control perpetuates itself. Readers who enjoy African speculative fiction, alternate history, young heroes and action-rich stories with serious political concerns will find much to admire here.
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