A Song of Lost Legends is M.H. Ayinde’s debut novel, a brazen, potent epic fantasy that launches her career and the Invoker Trilogy. The novel is inspired by African myth and history, but is much more than that. There’s a bit of a lost technology element with the history of a people known as the Scathed who left behind technology far more advanced than the people in the Nine Lands can understand. Told through multiple points of view, Ayinde paints a picture of people in world that is full of wonder and fear, magic and technology, high class and street urchins.
A SONG OF REBELLION. A SONG OF WAR. A SONG OF LEGENDS LOST.
The people of Nine Lands know their history. The kingdom once belonged to the Scathed people, until their greyblood servants rose up and slaughtered them. King Ahiki and his warlords laid claim to the realm by defeating the rebels and driving them out to the Feverlands.
Now, thousands of years later, attacks by the greybloods are rebuffed by the invoker clans, warriors of noble blood who summon their ancestors to fight with them in battle. But the war has gone on too long. A general draft is called to take the battle to the Feverlands and defeat the greybloods once and for all. A plan that seems doomed to fail.
When Temi, a commoner, accidentally invokes a powerful spirit, she believes it could be the key to ending the centuries-long war. But not everything that can be invoked is an ancestor, and some of the spirits that can be drawn from the ancestral realm are more dangerous than anyone can imagine.
It is hard to pinpoint one character as the single main character since Ayinde gives roughly equal time to five characters. If any one came to the forefront it was Jinao, a young man who wants to extract his revenge on the monster responsible for his mother’s death. You could also make the case for Temi being a protagonist, she’s the character whose story makes up a decent chunk of the first portion. Temi is caught up in a very uncomfortable relationship with a family of a higher class, she’s forced into crafting magical items called “techwork” her brother perfected (who was also killed early in the novel) to the detriment of her family’s financial well-being and her hopes of being a simple baker.
Both Jinao and Temi hear voices in their head, voices that could be spirits or some of the Scathed’s old technology speaking to them. Other point of view characters are Father Boleo, Elari, and Runt. Ayinde does a very nice job of making each character feel like a protagonist in their own right, that each point of view from these different characters felt unique while also connected to the larger story overall was a nice achievement. Elari may have been the character with whom I felt the weakest connection, Boleo’s journey took on some interesting twists, Runt’s story felt an inverse or parallel to Temi’s story, but that could be because they interacted with the same character but at different perspectives. I found that particular connection to be very intriguing.
As a fan of series like The Wheel of Time and The Dark Tower, whenever there’s a “lost technology” that far surpasses the technology level of the populace, or a lost people of the world who were more advanced than the people we are following, I’m hooked. Ayinde made this element work very well as she played up the mystery of this “techwork” in the way the character like Temi, Jinao, and Boleo viewed the technology. Because of this large disparity in the lost technology and the characters who use it (even if they don’t understand how it works), a vast history of the world is immediately implied. Imagine plopping working iPads into the hands of people of the 9th Century for example and you might get an idea of the gulf of knowledge (and possibly time) separating the characters from the lost technology. Legends have grown around the creators of this technology, they were destroyed by it, perhaps?
My only real issue with the novel is something that can happen with novels featuring a fairly large cast of point of view characters. Temi’s story was so gripping, so potent, and emotional for the first quarter or so of the novel (130 pages), I was a little frustrated that her point of view disappeared for the next 300 pages or so. Aside from that, bravo!
Ayinde brings a lot of energy to her characters and the world of A Song of Lost Legends and it is infectious. An impressive debut novel, a novel that serves as a great series starter, A Song of Lost Legends has a lot of appeal to fantasy readers – empathetic characters, an incredibly fascinating world, and some very tight plotting.
A bonus is the fantastic cover by Richard Anderson – it really nails the “eye catching” element very well.
Recommended.
© 2025 Rob H. Bedford
Trade Paperback | June 2025
https://www.mhayinde.com/ | https://winniewoohoo.com/novels/the-creek-girl/
Excerpt: https://www.simonandschuster.com/p/song-of-legends-lost-excerpt
Review copy courtesy of the publisher, Saga Press
