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| The Birth of The Pale Rider
| | Akintomide Ifedayo Adigwe
| Yinka the main protagonist of the story is a twelve year old boy who is a first year student in an exclusive private secondary school in Offa, a small town in western Nigeria. He finds himself inadvertently drawn into an alternate realm when three bullies forcefully remove him from the school premises and carry him to an eerie forest behind the school.
After narrowly escaping death at the hands of a bear like entity called an Eseku, he falls into a wooden cave where he meets a talking turtle called Saworide who reveals to him that he is in the Forbidden forest; a place which is the boundary between the earth realm (Ikole Aye) and the spirit realm (Ikole Orun).
Saworide sends him back to his world, but even in the short minutes they spend together a bond is formed between them. He tells Yinka how he can return to the Forbidden forest whenever he wants. When Yinka returns to the earth realm the reader is alerted to a series of cosmic events taking place in space. This is through radio and television broadcasts going on in the background when the principal characters in the book are in their homes, driving in their cars or at work.
These events become less random finally climaxing in a cataclysmic series of natural disasters which occur around the globe almost simultaneously. One of such events happens over Yinka’s school and he is wrenched back into the forbidden forest with terrible wounds where he is eventually found by Saworide. Therein begin a race across strange worlds pursued by vengeful witches and devilish creatures culminating in a frightening conclusion of loss, death, shared history and fate
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