Published by Orbit in April 2025
Review by Meghan Ellis
Step into a world of ancestors, revenge and rebellion in M.H. Ayinde’s A Song of Legends Lost, an epic debut novel in the science fantasy tradition. This is a story of propaganda and power, which begins when Temi, a commoner from the slums, accidentally invokes an ancestral spirit, a privilege previously monopolised throughout the Nine Lands by the noble warrior class.
Temi’s actions reveal that not everything that can be invoked is an ancestor, a secret that leads to the early stages of a regime-shattering rebellion. From there, we follow several inhabitants of the Nine Lands as they deal with the events in motion. A Song of Legends Lost tells five stories simultaneously, exploring the world through the eyes of a morally grey monk, a disaffected young noble, a commoner, a battle-hardened warrior and a truly unlikeable urchin.
As the characters navigate this new truth, the stage is set for greater – and more dangerous – spirits to be drawn from the ancestral realm.
Engaging worldbuilding is a must-have for a novel of this length, and Ayinde excels with setting and society alike. At its strongest, A Song of Legends Lost avoids Euro-centric fantasy cliche by weaving together a tapestry of peoples inspired by precolonial cultures. The Nine Lands are a kingdom of ancestral summoning, crime syndicates, war drafts and intergenerational living. Characters eat plantain and wield macuahuitls. They perform sacred dances, create votives, write on papyrus and adorn themselves with warpaint. Readers are given a secondary world rich in inspiration; Ayinde’s world is many things, but it is never boring.
Fans of Japanese roleplaying games will see their influence in Ayinde’s exhilarating combat choices. Much like in the Final Fantasy series, invokers summon spirits to fight on their behalf, strengthening this bond through tattoos and blood ties. Every action scene is electric. Each time the inexperienced Jinao receives a blow or the seasoned Elari revisits her demons feels charged. If you judged A Song of Legends Lost by its cover, then the frenetic combat and high-stakes, to-the-bone fighting will definitely satisfy.
One of the most surprising things about the novel is its position as a science fantasy epic. The prologue introduces the reader to techwork – cursed remains of an ancient civilisation – and the rest of the story gradually teases more about its origins, its purpose, and how knowledge of techwork’s use is withheld from citizens both poor and noble. We are in a post-apocalyptic world controlled by a secretive priestly class, a place where robot horses and rickshaws coexist. By the end of A Song of Legends Lost, we understand how techwork has come to be a tool of oppression, but there is plenty of mystery left to unpack down the line.
As the novel progresses, one thing that weakens it is the ambitious spread of POV characters. Aside from our five main voices, the prologue and epilogues introduce even more personas, all of whom have different motivations from the core cast. Nobody, not even the corrupt monk Boleo, knows everything about the world they inhabit. This is almost brilliant, yet I found myself frustrated when a character would experience a climactic incident or reach the precipice of a revelation, only to turn the page and be half a world away.
This is most notable with Temi. A commoner from a family of bakers, she creates forbidden techwork on the side with her brother and baba, living in a sprawling shop-come-house atop a hill in the city slums. She is our first proper glance into the world, a lodestone for the hierarchy of the Nine Lands. But after her initial appearance, she disappears for over 300 pages. Her story is lost amongst the battles and betrayals that follow – though, without spoiling things, her reappearance is one of the most satisfying sections of the novel.
That said, the breakneck pacing feels more like the growing pains of a new series than a flaw, one which will hopefully be addressed once the characters begin to untangle their respective mysteries. If you’re looking for an epic fantasy with an engaging, as-of-yet unrevealed conceit, then A Song of Legends Lost steps up admirably to the task.