Ayomide Victor is a writer, blogger, storyteller and drama minister, and his book: “Invasion: Before the Apocalypse (A Sons and Demons Book One),” published in 2023 by Ifeadigo, Abuja, digs into the esoteric world. The book, set in the southwest of Nigeria, especially in Ogbomoso, Oyo State, is a case study of the looming battle between light and darkness, between good and bad, and between God and the devil.
In the first chapter of the book, we meet Agnes, the main protagonist, who is on her way to Ogbomoso from Lagos.
She is in a bus alongside other passengers as they witness an accident. She is a nurse on her way to studying for a degree in nursing at the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, LAUTECH.
The accident involved a man and his driver. They were in a car involved in a fatal accident. Agnes approaches the accident victims to offer help, but the man grabs her hand and makes a strange statement to her. He says to her (p12), “You are the chosen one!” “He is coming…” “Be prepared. Find others.”
In the second chapter, we see her in a hospital, and a horrific nightmare seizes her right in the middle of the night. A winged creature grabs her by the throat and utters some words to her in an unknown tongue. Agnes and Beatrice would later discover the words uttered by this creature in an archaeology text and learn of the meaning of those words.
Here, Beatrice begins to dabble into the world of the unknown. In Ogbomoso, Agnes experiences another dreadful nightmare in the home of Beatrice, her sister. This time (chapter four), she recognises the creature trying to torment her as Tosin, one of the guys in her sister’s neighbourhood. Her first handshake with Tosin seems to bring some mysterious sensations to both of them. But her second meeting with Daniel on her very first day on campus is similar. Unknown to Agnes, Daniel is also beset by this apparition too.
Then the nightmare again (chapter five), and this time, a young man comes to rescue Agnes from looming death from a demon on a horse. And Agnes decides that seeing a person with deep spiritual insights is the way out of the repeated nightmares. Beatrice leads her to Pastor Caleb. But at Caleb’s church they get more than what they bargained for. Right in the middle of prayers, all Agnes sees are demons, yes demons in church, and evil spirits leaving some and entering into others. And they leave. But not without an encounter with Hosea, who seems to be a kindred spirit with Agnes. And soon after, they meet again and Hosea tells her about what she has been seeing in the nightmares. He gives her a hint of the mandate – a divine mandate that hangs on their heads. He gives her a meeting location, and warns her about Tosin.
This 30-chapter book, Invasion is a text on the spiritual and spiritism. Beatrice, Agnes’ sister, gets entangled in a spiritual ritual gleaned from strange books about ancient religions. She is caught up in the web and it looks impossible to get out of it. And attention shifts to Beatrice as she seems to be initiated into the world of the demons. Essentially, she finds out later that her mother, a deaconess and prayer warrior in church, is actually a witch. One of the elders in her nightmare with similar features as her mother is actually her mother. Chapters 11 and 12 of the book give the reader a peep into this, and the author intricately brings vivid reality into the narration by his deployment of strong imagery and symbolism.
In this book, we read about the downside of students living unregulated lives. This is especially pronounced where their tertiary institutions are without on-campus accommodation. Both male and female students are left to lives of abundant liberty, thus making some of them to be involved in unwholesome relationships, as evident in the relationship of Beatrice and Peter (chapter 14). We also see glimpses of this in the seemingly budding relationships between Daniel and Agnes, and the Victoria-Hosea-Brother Israel (chapter 24), her erstwhile failed deliverance minister.
The 393-page book is also an apocalyptic commentary on the practice of false religiosity clothed in the garb of Christianity. The dark world seems unmoved by the paraphernalia of religion (p128) because the world of today “is too normal” and “too secular” to sense the overbearing incursion of darkness. The ancestors of Victoria allude to this false illusion of faith, and this is evident in the conversation (Pp135-136) of Beatrice and her mother too. These episodes also throw up significant truths about the practice of religion today. And the conversations by the members of the dark world are attempts which (rather correctly and successfully) play on the minds of their targets, inflicting doubt punches on them.
As things turn out, there is a grand plan to stop Agnes from attaining her own divine mandate. In an ironic twist in the book, Beatrice and their mother are now on a parallel camp to Agnes. They both have to stop Agnes from getting to her destination of light. But with the leading of Hosea, Agnes gets to meet some people who had been waiting to receive her.
In Invasion: Before the Apocalypse, the reader is treated to large bowls of happenings, rituals and rites of the underworld where the spiritual hold sway. On the other side, we are also given a glimpse of what goes on there. And the author has been able to serve the reader deep mystery and metaphors of the mystic world. And as we encounter all the major gladiators in the book, we are drawn into following them in their journeys towards their separate and collective mandates.
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The book is a case study of the looming battle between light and darkness, between good and bad, and between God and the devil. And the author has indeed shown unequal dexterity with his description of all the forces at war, uncovering them layer by layer. And we are hooked onto the book, by the courtesy of the author’s fluid, racy narration, potent suspense, deployment of vivid imagery and deep understanding of his mission.
. Olatunbosun is a broadcast journalist, fact checker and book reviewer at Splash FM 105.5, Ibadan. He can be reached via molatunbosun@splashfm1055.com, X and Instagram @miketunbosun.